The Review Show

Episode 276. We watched season one of the 2017 Netflix crime thriller Mindhunter, based on true events. In 1977, the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit begins a groundbreaking study into serial killers, traveling the country to interview incarcerated murderers to learn more about their patterns and processes, in the hopes of identifying future killers and stopping them before they start. We discuss the show's own haunting and darkly comedic patterns, making friends with the abyss, and exploding birds. 

• (00:00) - - Intro

Episode 275. We watched the 1998 horror movie The Faculty, from writer Kevin Williamson and director Robert Rodriguez. A mis-matched crew of high school students come together when they suspect their teachers are being taken over by aliens, and they need to use a popular new homebrewed drug to kill the alien queen and save those who have been infected. We discuss the twists on traditional high school archetypes, a very subtle theater kid joke, alluding to sex but not actually seeing it, and standing in a lawn sprinkler.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 274. We watched the 2014 black and white Iranian skateboarding vampire romance A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, from writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour. In the lonely town of Bad City, Iran, a young man working to pay off his father's debt to a local drug dealer encounters a mysterious girl who stalks the city at night, preying upon its oppressors. We discuss the mix of genres from spaghetti western to teen coming-of-age romance, how exciting a very slow scene can be, and how we wish there was even more skateboarding.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 273. We're kicking off our annual all-horror October with 2013's Afterlife with Archie comics, from writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Francesco Francavilla. Jughead's beloved pup Hot Dog has been hit by a car, and when he asks Sabria the Teenage Witch to bring him back to life, he comes back wrong. Hot Dog bites Jughead, starting a zombie apocalypse in Riverdale. Archie, Betty, Veronica, and a crew of other traumatized survivors have to leave their town behind to go look for help. We discuss our limited personal contexts for the 80-year Archie franchise, how this series feels like a rough draft for the Riverdale TV show, and how vampires could fit into all of this.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 272. We're continuing our ongoing monthly series reading Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics, talking about volumes 4-6 in this episode. Hellboy continues to deal with arcane magic forces trying to use him to summon an apocalypse, as well as the BPRD treating one of his fellow supernatural beings as a disposable tool instead of a teammate. Fed up with being a pawn in someone else's plans, Hellboy goes off to travel the world on his own, but finds it difficult to escape his past, even at the bottom of the ocean.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 271. It's back-to-back Giamatti as we watch 2004's wine nerd movie Sideways! Divorced and depressed Miles takes his buddy Jack on a bachelor's weekend to California wine country. Jack wants to score some action before his wedding, while Miles just wants to lose himself in the pinot noir, struggling to reciprocate the advances of a friendly waitress at a local restaurant he frequents on these trips. As Jack's dalliances bring chaos to their vacation, Miles has to step up to help his friend, and learn to take better care of himself.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 270. To honor the 50th anniversary of hip-hop this year, we watched the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton, about the founding of N.W.A. Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, DJ Yella, and MC Ren form the prolific rap group against the backdrop of their southern California town stricken by gang violence, hoping to bring catharsis to their community and control their own futures. The group faces censorship threats, police aggression, trickery from their manager, death, disease, and other tragedies, but their friendship and creative passion survives to this day.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 269. We watched the self-contained first season of the anthology crime series True Detective from 2014. Detectives Cohle and Hart investigate a seemingly occult killing of a young woman in rural Louisiana in 1995, chasing down myriad leads and eventually taking down the killer -- or so they think. In 2012, after new clues are brought to light and the two retired detectives are grilled by newer members of the force, the strained partnership reunites for a final showdown with the murderer who has quietly fed off this town for decades.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 268. Our new monthly ongoing book club is reading Mike Mignola's original Hellboy comics from the 90s, three volumes a month until we've completed the series! Hellboy is a demonic being summoned by Nazi occultists in the 1940s, but adopted as a child into the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. He grew up traveling the world to investigate the supernatural and protect the innocent from the threats whispered about in folktales and ghost stories. As he closes each case, he also deals with the mystery of his origin and his true infernal purpose.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Episode 267. We listened to season one of the audio fiction podcast Mockery Manor, from Long Cat Media. It's 1989 in England, and teenager JJ has a summer job at Mockery Manor theme park. She's joining her twin sister Bette, who's already settled into her job there and has developed her own alliances and romances with the fellow young workers, which doesn't help the tense relationship between these sisters. JJ feels even more isolated when she discovers possible missing persons and murder cases at the park, which could be connected to her own family.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.