We Wanna Watch

Welcome to our first annual awarding of Gold Watches, where we honor all the films that We Wanna Watched! Join us to reflect on our 64 movies watched as we celebrate our first year of the podcast. How many people done doubted us?! Please enjoy this long, meandering hangout of an episode with lots of cat-related interruptions. Thanks to all watchers for listening! And watching, right? RIGHT??

Our last movie of the fiscal year (and by that I mean it's been almost a year of the podcast!) is this week's Lane's Frame, The Great Escape (1963) directed by John Sturges. We have quite a few digressions in this episode about the banality of evil, depicting war in movies, and why the Nazi salutes in this movie seem so funky. Also, a brief intro about 2024's Look Back directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama. Also the MEOWING. Ricky's cats were really fucking loud this episode.

Here's the clip of George Mackay running to Roman Holiday (not Roman's Revenge, my bad).

This week's Rick's Pick is a return to form for our show: a random movie he saw a viral clip of online. We watched Fitzcarraldo (1982) directed by Werner Herzog. Described by Ricky as "Herzog's Apocalypse Now" (despite Ricky having not seen Apocalypse Now nor any other Herzog movies), we talk about hubris, movies with troubled productions, and how this movie just hasn't aged very well. Plus: an episode-long appearance by my Mario desktop plant fountain, fml.

Oh Yeah! This week's Fresh double feature Lane's Frames are a blatant excuse to talk about the music of Daft Punk; we watched Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (2003) directed by Leiji Matsumoto, Kazuhisa Takenouchi, Daisuke Nishio, and Hirotoshi Rissen AND Daft Punk's Alive 2007 Live Concert at Lollapalooza (2007), which has no director credits because it seems to have just been some footage that was never released until like 15 years later? Anyway, we have fun Burnin' through our gripes with these movies and show a bit of Emotion talking about the Daft Punk discography, Touch-ing on our childhood relationships to music. And, unlike some other episodes, this one is not Too Long.

Thanks again to NTRXMUSIC for help crafting this outro B)

The final entry in our WE WANNA WAIL series (no for real this time) was chosen in a somewhat snap-decision to be Smile 2 (2024) directed by Parker Finn. As a carryover from the days of Kino 101 with Ricky, the first Smile movie holds a special place in our canon, so it only fits that we would scare the shit out of ourselves in theatres with the sequel. I feel like you can really hear how nervous we sound in this one lmao. Plus: a special appearance by all five (5) cats, and a sneak preview of Ricky's upcoming movie "Psyche", in theatres 2025.

Surprise! WE WANNA WAIL ends (😏) with a special early Halloween drop for our discussion about The Exorcist (1973) directed by William Friedkin. Here's that e-boy content you ordered.

Much like the protagonist in the last 25 minutes of this movie, WE WANNA WAIL! This week is a very special Nick's Flick (or is it? watchers, get at us), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) directed by Tobe Hooper. Does this movie live up to its blood-soaked reputation? We all know Ricky hates women, but does Nick hate women more? Is this episode too long? How many movies did I say to Ricky, "we'll watch that someday" about during this? (Death Proof, Safe, May December, Black Christmas, Skinamarink, Licorice Pizza, so six...)

P.S. here's my review of Poltergeist with the offending comment.

We take a little breather during our WE WANNA WAIL series to watch this week's double feature of Rick's Picks, Monster House (2006) directed by Gil Kenan and ParaNorman (2012) directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler. We talk about stop motion animation, creepy old people, and how "Prenderghast" doesn't really give Slav. Plus: a little detour to talk about THE SUBSTANCE (2024) directed by Coralie Fargeat.

WE WANNA WAIL continues as we enter the Forbidden Room with this week's Lane's Frame, Pulse (2001) directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. We talk about ghosts, existential dread, and how scary it would be to have some guy just pop up in our Discord call. Plus, are all the jokes online about people wanting to kill themselves desensitizing us to depictions of suicide in movies?

Continuing our WE WANNA WAIL miniseries (not We Wanna Whale, mind you), this week's Rick's Pick was a thematic double feature: Perfect Blue (1997) directed by Satoshi Kon and Black Swan (2010) directed by Darren Aronofsky. While we compare these two films' visual and story similarities, we come to the conclusion that the similarities are far outweighed by the differences in characterization, viscerality, and emotion - though Aronofsky is not beating the ripoff allegations, either. Plus: Oreo Coke Zero, Amazing Cultivation Simulator, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.