This week, the hunt is on as we kick off the new year with a spy thriller from the director of Die Hard. It's 1990's The Hunt For Red October, directed by John McTiernan, based on the book by Tom Clancy, and starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Sam Neill, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, Courtney B. Vance, Stellan Skarsgard, Jeffrey Jones, Rick Ducommun and Fred Thompson. It's the first of a four-week January series that we're calling The Hunt For The American James Bond, as we go from last month's Mission: Impossible discussion to the broader effort of Paramount Pictures in the 1990s to create a hit spy franchise. There's certainly a lot to like about this one, but Baldwin's Jack Ryan feels pretty flat at the heart of it. Plus, Justin and Hayley both caught The Iron Claw in theatres over the break.

Other works discussed in this episode include The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Thing, Alien, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, The Last Waltz, Kelce, Past Lives, Asteroid City, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered, Assault on Precinct 13, GoldenEye, the Jack Ryan series as a whole, the James Bond series as a whole, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jurassic Park, LOST, Crimson Tide, The Equalizer, and Training Day.

If you'd like to watch the movie along with us this week, it (along with every other movie we're doing this month) can be found streaming on Paramount+.

The hunt continues next week as we return with 1992's Patriot Games, in which Harrison Ford replaces Alec Baldwin in the lead, opposite a villainous Sean Bean. Until then, see you at the movies!