The Review Show

Episode 284. The Whatnauts answer the call to discuss all four movies under the Ghostbusters banner: the 1984 original, the 1989 sequel, the 2016 soft remake, and the 2021 "rebootquel" Ghostbusters: Afterlife. We discuss how the franchise has always appealed to children even when it wasn't made for them, how anyone can become a ghostbuster, city pride, spooky paintings, when do homages start to feel repetitive, Stephen King vibes, and what we want to see from the new Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire movie later this year.

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Join us for the 8th anniversary retrospective, which we've now declared will be called a Grand Prix! Just try to stop us!! Kyle and Melissa gather for our annual pizza awards banquet for favorite Review Show topics, best performances, biggest surprises, and for the first time ever, a two-time Dream Date winner. We also debut a new structure for the Review Show and Captain's Log starting in 2024! Master of electricity Ignacio joins us for a rousing discussion on southern California theme parks, and we name our goals for the year ahead.

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Episode 283. Happy holidays! We're ending the year by watching a two-part Christmas special from the animated family sitcom Bob's Burgers: season 8 episodes 6 and 7, titled "The Bleakening." When the family's Christmas tree is stolen from a party at their restaurant, Linda and Bob search for the culprit to get their kids' handmade ornaments back, while the kids suspect an anti-Santa known as the "Bleaken," who will prevent them from getting any presents. We discuss Linda's sincere love for the cruddy ornaments, meeting other local business owners in town, and the show's original musical numbers.

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Episode 282. Somebody stop us! We're talking about the 1994 living cartoon that is The Mask. Stanley Ipkiss is a hapless pushover who discovers a mask that, according to the original DVD packaging, "brings his innermost desires to wild, screaming life!" We discuss the Looney Tunes antics, impossible pajamas, piles of loose cash, the discovery of Cameron Diaz, and the '90s and early 2000s run of pulp stories harkening back to the '30s and '40s.

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Episode 281. We conclude our discussion on the original Hellboy comics, covering volumes 10-12, where Hellboy has to finally face his world-changing destiny and pay the ultimate price to stop others from using him in their malevolent plans. We discuss the one-shot stories bringing Hellboy to luchador matches in Mexico and the haunted woods of Appalachia, what the devil looks like if Hellboy has already taken the classic devil look, and how having your heart ripped from your chest generally means that you die.

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Episode 280. We had an A+ time with this B-movie, Brendan Steere's 2017 bad-on-purpose creature feature The VelociPastor. After priest Doug Jones sees his parents die in a car fire, he travels to China to clear his head, and encounters a mystical artifact that turns him into a velociraptor. He decides to use this power for good, ridding his city of drug dealers and ninjas. We discuss the moments of genuinely interesting film technique, calling a man younger than you "son," our admiration for Carol the sex worker/doctor/lawyer with a heart of gold, and plans for the sequel.

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Episode 279. We watched the puzzling 2019 neo-noir film Under the Silver Lake, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Sam is an aimless slacker who falls for a cute new neighbor, and after he finds her apartment suddenly vacated, he becomes determined to find the missing girl. A series of cryptic clues leads him through LA's hipster party scene all the way to a conspiracy in the shadowy upper echelons of society. We discuss the detailed codes and easter eggs hidden in the film, Andrew Garfield's wild physical performance, being too horny to fear for your own safety, and adult men drinking milk.

Here are the YouTube videos we were referring to in the episode:
https://youtu.be/M2ZUJFhZz1s?si=tj-Yhbk6C3Xd6P63
https://youtu.be/PKhTETwj9mA?si=Dnpf15aBn6Fza-d_
https://youtu.be/ZAiY6Y0fsOI?si=OBBwR3JnYn0gVblC 

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Episode 278.  We watched the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film Persona. A young nurse is hired to care for an actress who went mute after a breakdown. The two go to a secluded beach house to recuperate, with the nurse constantly talking in hopes of coaxing her patient out of this psychosomatic state, while the identities of the two women start to blur. We discuss the avant garde imagery, the unnervingly sparse settings, and who that mysterious boy is supposed to represent.

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Episode 277. Happy "Helloween" as we continue discussing the adventures of our pal Hellboy, with volumes 7-9 from writer Mike Mignola and new artist Duncan Fegredo. Old foes return to strike at Hellboy, and he learns surprising secrets about the human half of his lineage. We discuss the introduction of mainstream King Arthur mythology into this series based on more obscure folklore, making out with a goat, and crashing on a ghost's couch.

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