We Love the Love

We're taking a look at the start of Tom Cruise's star career by digging into the romance of Paul Brickman's 1983 hit Risky Business, starring Cruise alongside Rebecca De Mornay, who was not in her 90s when this was made.

Join in as we discuss the film as a response to Reaganism, expensive hot chocolate, our dads' favorite movies, and "Old Time Rock and Roll."

Plus: Why was Brickman's original ending replaced? What's Lana's last name? What's the sexiest public transit system? And, most importantly, what's the deal with that big egg?

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Next week: Lust, Caution (2007)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• 1983 trailer for Risky Business (YouTube)
• Roger Ebert's four-star review of Risky Business
• "At 20, Risky is Still Frisky" (Variety)
• "My Wild Summer with Tom Cruise: Women, Sean Penn, and the Making of Risky Business" by Curtis Armstrong (The Hollywood Reporter)
• "1983: MTV Aesthetics, Flashdance, and Risky Business (Erotic 80s Part 6)" (You Must Remember This)
• "Rebecca De Mornay on Dating Tom Cruise and the Success of Risky Business" (Celebrity Page on YouTube)
• "Risky Business Director: "Some People Like the Visibility. I Don't" (Salon)
• "Adam McKay 'Wouldn't Be Surprised' if Wicked was Banned in '3-5 Years' Due to its 'Radical' Storyline" (The Hollywood Reporter)

We're celebrating the start of the baseball season by digging into one of the sport's great movie romances: Ron Shelton's steamy 1988 classic Bull Durham, starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins in a love triangle fans are calling "Challengers for straight people"!

Join in as we discuss our own minor league experiences, Kevin Costner's star trajectory, our feelings on various baseball rule changes, and messy kitchen sex.

Plus: What happened to the Disney "based on a true story" sports movies? What's the best basketball movie? And can minor-league teams not afford full-size towels?

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: Risky Business (1983)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• Roger Ebert's 3.5-star review of Bull Durham
• "Running for President is Harder than it Looks: Nats Hold Tryouts for Racing Mascots" (Washington Post)
• "Teddy Wins First Presidents Race" (Washington Post)
• "This is a Cry for Help" (Vulture piece on on the final season of Yellowstone)
• "Shelton Celebrates 20 Years for Bull Durham" (Southern Ledger)
• "MVP: Kevin Costner" (Entertainment Weekly)
• "At the Movies: June 10, 1988" (New York Times)
• "The Bull Durham House - With Southern Charm, 80s Nostalgia, and a Bathtub - is Sold" (The News and Observer)
• "Tim Robbins: Hall of Fame Violates Freedom" (The Age)
• "1988: Kevin Costner, Sean Young, No Way Out & Bull Durham (Erotic 80s Part 11)" (You Must Remember This)
• "Bull Durham: A New Musical Begins Performances" (Playbill)

We're setting sail for love as we look at the romance of Leo McCarey's 1957 melodrama An Affair to Remember, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr!

Join in as we discuss our favorite cinematic ships, singing dub star Marni Nixon, and an abundance of children's choirs.

Plus: How did Nicky Ferrante get famous? How do we get AFI to update their ranked lists of movies? How is this movie thirty minutes longer than 1939's Love Affair, which allegedly uses the same script? And, most importantly, why can't they just be together???

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: Bull Durham (1988)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• Bosley Crowther's 1957 review in the New York Times
• Retakes: Behind the Scenes of 500 Classic Movies by John Eastman (1989)
• An Affair to Remember in the AFI Catalog
• "They Missed Their Cruise Ship. That was Only the Beginning" (Curbed)

We're closing the book on our Unfinished Business series by taking a look at the scant romance of Justin Kurzel's 2016 adaptation of the Assassin's Creed video games, starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and a bunch of wasted character actors.

Join in as we discuss the way Kurzel adapts the style and structure of the games for film, the punishing seriousness of the tone, and our love of Jeremy Irons.

Plus: What was the plan for the sequels? Can you put a baby in the animus? What does anyone actually want in this movie? And, most importantly, is Cats the ultimate video game movie?

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: An Affair to Remember (1957)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• "Sony Targets Assassin's Creed for Bigscreen" (Variety)
• "Michael Fassbender to Star in Assassin's Creed" (MTV News)
• "Fassbender Game for Assassin's Creed" (Variety)
• "Assassin's Creed: Michael Fassbender Explains Animus Redesign" (ScreenRant)
• David Ehrlich's B- Review of Assassin's Creed (IndieWire)
• "The Witcher Author Says Netflix 'Never Listened' to His Ideas" (The Hollywood Reporter)

We're taking a look at male-oriented rom coms with this week's episode on Judd Apatow's 2007 comedy hit Knocked Up!

Join in as we discuss comedy drug scenes, the rolling series of scandals that engulfed star Katherine Heigl, our favorite Seth Rogen performances, and the wide-ranging discourse the film inspired.

Plus: Why are Apatow movies so long? Why doesn't Allison have her own home? Why did Allison start dating Ben? And, most importantly, how do you get pink eye?

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: Assassin's Creed (2016)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• 2007 New York Times profile of Judd Apatow
• "Giving the Last Laugh to Life's Losers" (New York Times)
• "For Apatow, Opportunity Knocks" (USA Today)
• Dana Stevens's review of Knocked Up at Slate
• Ross Douthat's response to Stevens in The Atlantic
• "The Politics of Shmashmortion" by Dana Stevens (Slate)
• Conversation between Emily Nussbaum and Adam Sternbergh about the film (New York)
• "Heigl's Anatomy" Vanity Fair cover story
• "Katherine Heigl Clarifies Knocked Up Remarks" (People)
• "Star Shuns Emmys, Angering Producers" (New York Times)
• Daily News piece documenting Rogen and Apatow's response to Heigl
• "Seth Rogen Talks Feeling 'Betrayed' after Katherine Heigl's Knocked Up Comments" (Hollywood Reporter)
• Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow discuss their experience with Heigl on Howard Stern in 2009
• Circuit City allowed people to trade in HD DVD players for blu-ray players

As Paramount's proposed merger with Skydance continues to wend its way past regulators, we're looking back at the beginning of the studio's financial troubles through the lens of the 2017 flop Monster Trucks!

Join in as we discuss the film's inception as Paramount's next big franchise, the diverging opinions of studio leadership and director Chris Wedge, and the many ways the studio signaled the audiences and the industry that they'd given up on it long before it came out.

Plus: Were the main characters held back in school several times? Is Creech less energy-efficient than a gas engine? Is Burke a landman? What would the planned sequels have been about? And, most importantly, are monster trucks even cool to begin with?

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: Assassin's Creed (2016)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• "Today Now! Interviews the 5-Year-Old Screenwriter of Fast Five" (The Onion)
• David Ehrlich's D+ Review of Monster Trucks (IndieWire)
• "Hear Me Out: Why Monster Trucks Isn't a Bad Movie" by Chris Evangelista (The Guardian)
• Deadline story announcing the development of Monster Trucks
• Monster Trucks casting announcements (The Wrap)
• "Monster Trucks Leads Viacom to Take $115M Write-Down" (The Hollywood Reporter)
• "Monster Trucks Proves It: Don't Let a 4-Year-Old Develop a Movie" (Wired)

As is tradition, we're taking this week to unpack the romances of all ten Best Picture nominees at next Sunday's Academy Awards!

Join in as we discuss The Brutalist's AI controversy, the underserved women of A Complete Unknown, our Conclave theories, the maximalism of The Substance, and more!

Plus: Will finally explains his long-hinted-at dislike of Wicked, Marc correctly identifies the year's hottest performance, Dune and Nickel Boys set the gold standard for literary adaptation, and the Best Original Song category continues to be a mess.

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: Monster Trucks (2017)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• Interview with Anora director Sean Baker on the Prestige Junkie podcast
• "Inside the Anora House" (IndieWire)
• "About the Destination: The Brutalist and Israel" (Screen Slate)
• "The Brutalist's AI Controversy Explained" (Vulture)
• "Glen Powell Reveals Steven Spielberg's Twisters Note that Changed the Ending" (Collider)
• Elizabeth Cotten playing "Freight Train"
• "Emilia Perez's Controversial Camino" (Vulture)
• Lemme Say This interview with journalist Sarah Hagi on uncovering Emilia Perez star Karla Sofia Gascon's Twitter page
• "Margaret Qualley was Given Prosthetic Boobs to 'Endow Me with the Rack of a Lifetime' for The Substance" (People)

Our Unfinished Business is taking us back to some classic We Love the Love far, since there's both a half-baked romance and a bizarrely-run high school in Adam Shankman's 2005 Vin Diesel vehicle The Pacifier!

Join in as we discuss the babysitting potential of various Vin Diesel characters, the school's dubious disciplinary priorities, the 2005 Teen Choice Awards, and the television oeuvre of Taylor Sheridan.

Plus: Who are the bad guys in this movie? Why is Lauren Graham's principal character in on the secret plan? Why does government scientist Tate Donovan keep his work at home? And, most importantly, how many passwords did the mom have to guess before she got the right one?

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: It's our 2025 Oscars Extravaganza, where we rate the romances of all ten Best Picture nominees!

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• 2015 claim by Vin Diesel on Facebook that Disney was developing a Pacifier sequel
• IGN writeup of Diesel's online campaign to play Black Bolt in Marvel's canceled Inhumans movie
• 2002 Variety description of Military Diaries on VH1
• Vulture piece on the disqualification for Oscars of Robbie Williams's "original" song from Better Man
• Kristen Baldwin's review of Landman for EW
• Alan Sepinwall's review of Landman for Rolling Stone
• "Is Landman Funny?" from Vulture

We're headed to the theaters for a look at the romance of the brand new DreamWorks Animation filmDog Man, based on the books by Dav Pilkey.

Join in as we discuss the state of DreamWorks in the 2020s, our favorite clones, the film's animation style, and theJurassic Worldmovies.

Plus: Does Dog Man retain the memories of his past lives? Is there a joke to Sarah Hatoff's name? Does Marc remember the plot ofThe Prestige? And what's wrong with TV these days?

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week:The Pacifier (2005)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• 2023Cartoon Brew report on DWA's shift away from in-house animation
• Interview with writer-director Peter Hastings atThe Wrap
• Interview with Peter Hastings at Polygon
• 2025 DWA intro
• WatchDual for free on Hoopla!

We're off to catch 'em all (unless that's a bad thing?) as we unpack the truncated romance of Pokémon the Movie 2000!

Join in as we discuss our own Pokémon origin stories, the three elements of creation, the villainous Lawrence III, Ash's bad mom, and this film's impact on American political history.

Plus: Which of the film's many bad songs is the worst one? Do Pokémon cards exist in the anime universe? What do the magic balls do? And, most importantly, what's the gayest Pokémon?

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!

Next week: Dogman (2025)

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Key sources and links for this episode: