The Fan & The Critic

We watch movies about motorsports and auto racing and then give you awards for various categories such as best drivers, best cars, best chase scenes, and more. The award categories may or may not have been properly defined prior to recording, which leads to some differing opinions on what 'Best' actually means in some areas. Regardless, we cover a wide variety of topics and cover movies from the 1960s to the 2020s and from live action, animated, and documentary features.

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We talk about two of this year's most popular movies. To tak about the Odyssey, we bring two people who thankfully know the source material much better than we do. Then we talk about Obsession and what wishes we would make with our One Wish Willow.

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We talk about movies featuring current/former wrestlers. These are not movies about wrestlers, but instead usually "bad" action movies with wrestlers in the lead or supporting roles. We then each rate these movies on 4 categories and Ben uses his advanced analytics to determine the King of the Hill of the Fan & The Critic.

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Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has us thinking about every Greek mythology movie ever made — so Ben and David join Carson and Paolo to crown the best Zeus and Hercules, argue over which myths Hollywood still hasn't touched, and cast our own Greek Mythology Cinematic Universe.

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Ben and Elon stop by to talk about the movies that made us who we are — the ones we watched too young, the ones that hit different now, and the ones we're a little embarrassed to admit shaped us. It starts sentimental, gets weird, gets serious, then gets weird again, and somehow ends with a horror movie game.

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Carson and Paolo run down their Top 10 movies of 2025. Carson's list is the usual pretentious indie picks, except this year Paolo's is almost entirely horror — proof that nine years in, we still don't watch the same movies.

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Carson built a Christmas movie trivia quiz that wildly overestimates how much anyone else knows about Christmas movies, Ben included. Spoiler: not everyone has watched Scrooged (1988) twenty-plus times like Carson has, and that shocks him every single time.

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Ben and Peter join Carson and Paolo to dig into the horror franchises that have lasted longest and the ones that should've stopped a sequel or two ago. Expect strong opinions, dumb tangents, and at least one franchise we change our minds about mid-conversation.

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Peter comes back to talk 80s fantasy movies and our ongoing D&D campaign, and yes, it's another two-hour episode. We had a great time recording it — whether you have a great time listening is between you and your podcast app.

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Carson gets tied to a chair (figuratively, mostly) and forced to sit through a stack of movie musicals, including Wicked and Emilia Pérez, and finds at least one nice thing to say about each. Our guests actually know what makes a musical good or bad, which helps.

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