Screeners Podcast

The Screeners may be short a host for this episode, but they’re definitely not short of material. The movie and TV trailers released at Comic-Con are all over the YouTubes, so you know Chris is going to have a field day with them. Maybe even Josh watched a couple; who knows?

And once they’re done talking about Marvel, DC, and Netflix (because let’s face it; that’s all we’re getting out of Comic-Con), this episode’s main event is a double header of two very different movies: Dunkirk and The Big Sick. Maybe one day we’ll get a romantic comedy set during wartime, but until then we’ll have to settle for episodes like this where Chris “didn’t get to see” one of the movies, and Josh “didn’t get to see” the other. We’re sure it has nothing to do with each movie’s explosion-to-dialogue ratio.

In the next episode, we’ll be moving on from World War II to the Cold War with a review of Atomic Blonde, but until then we’ll be hanging out on Facebook, so come say hi.

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The Screeners have a movie review and top three planned, but before they head into the main event, they take a quick look in the ol’ mailbag and actually find something. A listener had a thoughtful question about the meaning of “success”, and Chris misses no chance to wax philosophical, so this seemed like as good a time as any to answer some email.

After that, it’s time to join your regularly scheduled main event. It’s been 6 years since the first Planet of the Apes movie, but...wait; what? You say it’s been almost 50 years since the first one? This is another one of those Spider-Man nightmare franchises that’s impossible to track, isn’t it?

OK, so this is the third movie in the most recent series, which Tim Burton had nothing to do with. Josh should be happy to hear this, since he thought the 2001 Planet of the Apes was the source material here. That was his excuse for not seeing War, but it turns out he doesn’t even have that. Oh well; we hear the movie’s good, despite Josh’s unwarranted revulsion.

Our top 3 for this episode comes to us from Chad, who thought it’d be great to talk about escape scenes. Josh, not having seen the main event, had no idea why this topic made sense for this episode, but he showed up regardless to subvert the spirit of the segment in any way he can.

That’s all for now, but the next episode should be a fun one—it’s Dunkirk and The Big Sick. See you then!

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The Screeners have an episode packed with two full movie reviews, a great Top 3, and more than a little interpersonal conflict, so no sense in wasting time with pointless exposition. If only we could teach Josh the same lesson for his reviews…

First up is Spider-Man: Homecoming. Not only is it a movie with a colon in the title (more on that later in the episode); it’s the sixth Spidey movie in a franchise that might qualify as the most internally confused in the entire Marvel Cluster of Upchuck (that’s what MCU stands for, right?). Four out of five Screeners agree, though: It could have been worse.

Superhero hijinks are followed by...an action musical? A hyperrealist crime comedy? We’re not entirely sure what to call Baby Driver, but it definitely, um, exists. Join the Screeners for a rare spoiler-less recap of the latest brainchild of the director who brought us Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Finally, we promised you a Top 3, and a Top 3 you shall get. Some would call this an “epic installment” of the standard Screeners segment; some might call it an “unmitigated disaster”—either way, all five hosts have prepared a list of the worst and weirdest movie titles they can think of (subject to some arbitrary criteria, of course). What’s better than personal vendetta in list form? Personal vendetta in list form plus audience participation, of course! Chad just doesn’t know how to have fun anymore; that’s the real problem here.

OK, party over. Next up is War for the Planet of the Apes, though, so don’t miss that!

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It’s happened again. Words we never wanted to have to say after that first fateful release in 2007, but which we’ve had to say over and over since then: Michael Bay has made another Transformers movie. We’re up to five now, but it might as well be five hundred, right? Our culture will never be rid of them now; their gleaming CGI chrome grilles will haunt our era in the annals of film history. Future (current?) seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000, kept on life support by avid proponents of a counterculture all but forgotten, will mock them mercilessly, effortlessly weaving Martin Lawrence lines from Bad Boys in with quips about how the last explosion was disappointingly smaller than the one before it.

Where were we? Oh yeah; Chad and Daniel paid money to see Transformers 5, and they’re here to talk about it. Then they’re going to do a top 3 about Michael Bay’s career...although, given the subject matter, “top” might be a little generous. How about “least likely to give you an eye rolling-induced headache”?

We saw the teaser for Cars 3, but we weren’t sure what it’s about. Is it that one where the driver gets his face messed up in a car wreck? No? Talladega Nights meets The Wrestler? Not that either? OK; we’re out of ideas. It’s a good thing we have Chad and Daniel; those two will see anything. So, boys, tell us: Was Cars 3 The Good Dinosaur good, or was it just Cars 2 good? We will be making our theatergoing decisions based on your judgement, so just keep that in mind.

Oh, and while they’re talking Pixar, they decided they’d take the opportunity to mix up the standard Top 3 list a bit and go over their Top 3 and Bottom 3 Pixar movies. We can’t wait to hear who liked Toy Story 4 more...what’s that? There’s still only 3 of those? We give up.

Tom Cruise has awakened an ancient evil, and it’s not Xenu...it’s Brendan Fraser’s career! The horror! We kid, we kid. Seriously, though, there’s a new The Mummy movie, in case the 10 The Mummy movies before this one weren’t enough for you. We’re not kidding about that number; we looked it up—and yes, we count shorts as “movies”. Go with it.

If you didn’t gather this from the first sentence, Tom Cruise is in this one, in case that makes it in some way more appealing for you.

It doesn’t do that for Josh, so he didn’t bother going to the theater, but the other Screeners totally did. They were so excited that they just had to do a bonus episode about it—and while they’re talking about mummies, they figured they’d also throw in a Top 3 about monster-themed media. Again, Josh isn’t here for this episode, but he told us that if he were, he’d take a page out of Chris’s playbook and insist his number 1 pick is Count Chocula.

In this special video game focused episode, Chad and Chris discuss all things E3 2017.

Another piece of the DC comic universe has been released to a thirsty public, and the Screeners are so anxious to review it that they aren’t even going to bother with a Jump Cuts segment. Take that, other entertainment news. They all headed to full theaters to see Wonder Woman (including Daniel, and he’s not even here for this episode), so was it everything they might have expected it to be after the tour de force that was Batman v. Superman?

For the sake of Patty Jenkins’ directorial career, we hope not.

After that main event, what other Top 3 could there be? It had to be (strong/fierce/unstoppable/amazing) female characters. Some of our listeners got in on this one too, so check out the everyone’s picks and let us know on Facebook who you think should really be hosting the show.

See you next time, when the Screeners (or at least a few of them) will be talking about Tom Cruise and an ancient curse—and no; we’re not talking about the painting of himself he has locked in his attic...nevermind; it’s The Mummy. They’ll be reviewing The Mummy.

Frankly, we’re worried about Johnny Depp. We’re afraid he might a gambling problem, or he’s made some terrible investments...or maybe he’s financing third-world revolutions on the down-low. There has to be some terrible reason that he’s in a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. This is Nicolas Cage’s career all over again, and we just can’t watch.

Or, most of the Screeners couldn’t watch. Chad and Daniel, however, take some kind of sadistic pleasure in Depp’s downward spiral, and they went to the theater to watch, well, dead men tell some tales. Was this installment any better than the previous four? The 8-ball we get most of our life advice from says “doubtful”, but maybe Daniel’s indefatigable optimism will save us all.

It already feels like the Year of the Ancient Franchise, and the summer movie season’s barely started. There’s a fifth Alien movie out there, and it won the weekend box office, albeit a little unimpressively. The Screeners saw it, though, and Josh isn’t going to miss a chance to gloat about his lack of participation in a mainstay of popular culture. He’s almost as bad as those cord-cutter types.