Retro Spectacles

Retro Spectacles closes out its inaugural YANST (You Ain’t Never See This) pairing with Mitcz’s pick, Walter Hill’s 1984 “rock & roll fable” Streets of Fire. What begins like a lost cult classic in the making quickly turns into something stranger: a movie with an incredible soundtrack, striking imagery, and enormous ambition that never quite becomes the film its opening promises.

Michael Paré stars as Tom Cody, a mercenary who returns home to rescue his ex-girlfriend, rock singer Ellen Aim, played by Diane Lane, after she is kidnapped by Willem Dafoe’s biker-gang leader Raven Shaddock. Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, and a young Bill Paxton round out a movie that mixes 1950s greaser iconography, 1980s music-video energy, comic-book fantasy, and a soundtrack that produced the hit “I Can Dream About You.”

Mitcz and Teddy get into the killer soundtrack, Walter Hill’s abandoned trilogy plans, the casting of Tom Cody, the infamous pickaxe showdown, and the film’s influence on games like Double Dragon and Final Fight.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles launches YANST (You Ain’t Never Seen This), a new series where Mitcz & Teddy each pick a movie neither of them has ever seen and find out whether there was a good reason it slipped through the cracks. Teddy’s selection is Righteous Kill, the largely forgotten 2008 crime thriller built around the long-awaited prospect of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sharing an entire movie as co-leads.

De Niro and Pacino play Turk and Rooster, veteran NYPD detectives investigating a vigilante serial killer targeting criminals who escaped justice. The supporting cast includes Carla Gugino, 50 Cent, John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg, Brian Dennehy, and a young Sterling K. Brown, giving Righteous Kill considerably more talent than its reputation might suggest.

Mitcz & Teddy dig into why the De Niro/Pacino reunion never becomes the event it should be, the paper-thin characters, the obvious twist, bizarre gym scenes, and some truly committed Pacino line readings. Then they decide whether there’s any reason you should finally see it yourself.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles continues its Black Mirror deep dive with the compact three-episode fifth season. Striking Vipers, Smithereens, and Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too tackle virtual intimacy, addictive technology, and artificial companionship, but Teddy and Mitcz find the season increasingly more interesting on paper than what ultimately makes it to the screen.

Striking Vipers stars Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Beharie in a story about longtime friends whose reunion inside an immersive VR fighting game complicates friendship, sexuality, and marriage. Smithereens follows Andrew Scott as a desperate man trying to reach a social media CEO played by Topher Grace, while Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too casts Miley Cyrus as a pop star whose personality becomes the foundation for an AI companion.

Mitcz and Teddy debate whether virtual sex counts as cheating, social media addiction and tech CEO accountability, AI companions, digital relationships, and the increasingly blurry line between personality and code.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles closes out Black Mirror Season 4 with the episode that proved too loaded to squeeze into Part 2. Black Museum turns the series itself into a roadside collection of technological nightmares, using three interconnected stories to revisit one of Black Mirror’s favorite questions: what happens when human suffering becomes something that can be packaged, sold, and consumed?

Letitia Wright stars as Nish, a traveler who stops at Rolo Haynes’ remote museum of technological curiosities. Douglas Hodge plays the proprietor, whose exhibits include a doctor able to physically experience his patients’ pain, technology that transfers a person’s consciousness into another body, and a death-row attraction built around an increasingly disturbing piece of Black Mirror history. The first story also draws from a short story by Penn Jillette.

Mitcz and Teddy dig into digital consciousness, pain as entertainment, public punishment, racialized spectacle, and the ethics of turning suffering into a business. They also revisit their series-long argument over whether code can actually suffer and close out their rankings for Season 4.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles continues its Season 4 deep dive with Arkangel and Crocodile, two stories about what happens when technology turns private life into something that can be watched, recorded, and ultimately used against you. Black Museum proved substantial enough to earn its own episode, so the Season 4 discussion continues next time.

Directed by Jodie Foster, Arkangel follows a mother who uses experimental technology to monitor her daughter’s location, experiences, and exposure to the world. Crocodile stars Andrea Riseborough as a successful architect whose buried past collides with a memory-recall system capable of reconstructing what witnesses have seen.

Mitcz and Teddy dig into helicopter parenting, childhood surveillance, privacy, memory technology, increasingly disastrous cover-ups, and whether either protagonist could have avoided destroying her own life. Plus, why Arkangel feels increasingly plausible and why Crocodile may work better as a very dark comedy than its reputation suggests.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles begins its Season 4 deep dive with USS Callister, Hang the DJ, and Metalhead, three episodes that push Black Mirror deeper into simulated consciousness, algorithmic relationships, and autonomous technology. With the season proving too loaded for one episode, Mitcz and Teddy are splitting the six installments in half before returning to Archangel, Crocodile, and Black Museum.

USS Callister stars Jesse Plemons and Cristin Milioti inside a twisted space-faring simulation built from the lives of real coworkers. Hang the DJ pairs Georgina Campbell and Joe Cole inside a dating system that determines exactly how long every relationship should last, while Metalhead follows Maxine Peake across a black-and-white wasteland hunted by a relentless robotic dog.

Mitcz and Teddy debate whether digital copies deserve human sympathy, whether Hang the DJ actually solves modern dating, and how much blame humanity deserves for building machines like Metalhead’s killer dogs.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles enters the Netflix era with Black Mirror’s expanded six-episode third season. A larger budget, an international cast, and a broader canvas take Charlie Brooker’s anthology from Channel 4 cult favorite to global phenomenon without abandoning its central question: what happens when technology amplifies fear, shame, grief, violence, and humanity’s worst impulses?

Nosedive stars Bryce Dallas Howard in a society governed by public ratings, while San Junipero follows Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis through a nostalgic seaside nightlife. Playtest puts Wyatt Russell inside an experimental horror game, Shut Up and Dance follows Alex Lawther into an escalating blackmail scheme, Men Against Fire sends Malachi Kirby into a technologically altered military campaign, and Hated in the Nation pairs Kelly Macdonald and Benedict Wong in an investigation involving social media and robotic bees.

Mitcz and Teddy discuss Netflix’s impact on the show, digital afterlives, military dehumanization, and more. They also rank all six episodes and debate whether Nosedive or San Junipero delivers Black Mirror’s most optimistic ending.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles continues its Black Mirror deep dive with the 2014 special that closes the show’s original Channel 4 era. Built around three interconnected stories, White Christmas brings the ideas, technologies, and moral questions of the first two series together for one ambitious final nightmare before Black Mirror’s move to Netflix.

Jon Hamm and Rafe Spall play two men sharing Christmas in an isolated outpost, gradually revealing the events that brought them there. Their stories introduce dating assistance through Z-Eyes, digital copies known as cookies, and blocking technology capable of removing someone from another person’s world. Oona Chaplin, Natalia Tena, and Janet Montgomery round out a special that moves between dark comedy, relationship drama, psychological horror, and dystopian science fiction.

Mitcz and Teddy discuss pickup-artist culture, wearable surveillance, digital slavery, and the difference between code and a person. Plus, whether anyone in White Christmas receives proportionate justice, and why they both consider White Christmas a five-star Black Mirror episode.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles continues its Black Mirror deep dive with Series 2, the three-episode Channel 4 run that pushes Charlie Brooker’s anthology into darker, more emotionally punishing territory. Be Right Back, White Bear, and The Waldo Moment move from grief and artificial companionship to public punishment and political collapse, testing just how bleak the show can become before its final Channel 4 special, White Christmas.

Be Right Back stars Hayley Atwell and Domhnall Gleeson in a story about mourning, digital footprints, and technology promising to preserve someone after death. White Bear drops Lenora Crichlow into a violent public nightmare she cannot understand, while The Waldo Moment follows an animated provocateur whose crude popularity begins spilling out of entertainment and into electoral politics. Together, the episodes expand Black Mirror beyond technological cautionary tales into questions about grief, justice, spectacle, and power.

Mitcz & Teddy discuss AI grief bots, digital resurrection, Replica, and why technology cannot provide a shortcut through mourning. They also unpack White Bear’s Justice Park, punishment as public spectacle, the real cases that influenced Charlie Brooker, and The Waldo Moment’s unexpectedly prescient take on political populism.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Retro Spectacles begins a new deep dive into Black Mirror with Series 1, the original Channel 4 run that introduced Charlie Brooker’s bleak, funny, horrifying vision of modern technology staring right back at us. Before the Netflix era, before San Junipero, before the show became shorthand for “this terrible thing is basically a Black Mirror episode,” there were three brutal opening swings: The National Anthem, Fifteen Million Merits, and The Entire History of You.

The National Anthem starring Rory Kinnear defined the brand in the most confrontational way possible and predicted a real David Cameron scandal four years early. Fifteen Million Merits is a pre-fame Daniel Kaluuya demo reel so convincing that Jordan Peele reportedly cast him in Get Out off the strength of it. And The Entire History of You, written by Jesse Armstrong four years before Succession, remains the only episode in the show's entire run without a Brooker writing credit. From the public appetite for humiliation to ad-saturated bike prisons to memory implants that would destroy every relationship on Earth, Series 1 still feels uncomfortably close to now.

Mitcz & Teddy revisit how the series first made its way into their friendship, why Brooker’s comedy background matters, how these early episodes already establish the show’s core formula, and a "is this your fault or does this situation just suck" framework for sorting every episode.

Get your spectacles on and join us!

Links

• Doug Stanhope on Screenwipe
• Screenwipe's 2016 Annual Review
• Philomena Cunk on Screenwipe

Have thoughts on this episode? Let us know directly by checking the post for this episode on Our Official Website. Comments are not shown publicly, but noteworthy comments may be selected for on-air reading!

For all relevant episode links, our social media accounts, and contact info, please visit retrospecspod.com

If you'd like to support us directly, please visit patreon.com/retrospecs

If you dig this, a review on your podcast app of choice is GREATLY appreciated and helps us rise to the top, where all the pretty people like yourself can slip on their Retro Spectacles!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.