Bigger, bolder, more ambitious, and more character-driven than its predecessor, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 also got better reviews and took in a heftier box office. It is often cited as one of the few MCU movies that possesses a distinct visual character and a unique directorial voice. Ryan is joined by Toby, Cheryl, and Sarah for a conversation about this rousing, emotive crowd pleaser. Talking points largely center on the movie's embrace of humor, needle drops, and found family...

Among the most successful and beloved films in the expansive Marvel Studios catalog, Guardians of the Galaxy was initially seen as a bit of a risk due to its offbeat character designs and obscure source material. However, because of strong performances, a fun array of needle drops, and storytelling that judiciously balances humor and heart, a sci-fi movie about a sentient tree and a talking space raccoon made over $700 million at the international box office and was soon spun off into a...

Featuring lavish sets, elaborate makeup effects, numerous references to European folklore, and ascending new superstar Tom Cruise as the main protagonist, Legend was director Ridley Scott's attempt to transfer the appeal of the fantasy genre from the printed page to the silver screen. It failed to attract much of an audience while in theaters, but Legend gradually acquired a following through home video and frequent broadcasts on basic cable. As such, the film has enjoyed a long cultural...

The most popular, visible, and imitated member of The Three Stooges by a significant margin, Curly Howard's manic physical comedy, childlike comedic persona, and arsenal of catch phrases were often perceived as the core of the comedy team's popular appeal. Often seen as a tragic figure beyond the camera, Curly Howard's various addictions and excesses would torpedo his private life and ultimately lead to an early grave. Ryan is joined by Rachel for a discussion of four short films that...

Spaceballs yielded mediocre box office returns and was widely criticized as a creative misfire for director/co-writer/supporting actor Mel Brooks, but it quickly found an audience through home video and constant broadcasts on basic cable. By lampooning the culturally-omnipresent Star Wars franchise, Spaceballs served as an accessible entrypoint for younger people looking to get into Mel Brooks' filmography; for many born well after Brooks' heyday in the 1970's, Spaceballs is often the first...

Shortly after Bad Taste (1987) and well before The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Peter Jackson directed a lowbrow Muppets parody entitled Meet the Feebles. Taking place on a puppet-run variety show comparable to what Kermit and the gang typically do, the anthropomorphic animals in this film spend a bit more time doing drugs, shooting porn, having Viet Nam flashbacks, and plotting against each other. Released to mixed reviews and indifferent box office, Meet the Feebles crawled its way to...

The success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) demonstrated that splashy cartoon crossovers would grab a great deal of attention. One of the more odd and timely results of this fact was Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, an anti-drug PSA where Bugs Bunny, Papa Smurf, Garfield, Alf, Winnie the Pooh, and Michelangelo team up to stop an adolescent boy from getting addicted to crack. Spurred through production by Roy Disney and financed by McDonald's, Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was broadcast...

Session 9 is a mediocre horror movie released to a collective shrug at the turn of the last century. It is, however, notable to Ryan, Sylvan, and Cheryl since it was filmed in their hometown and set at Danvers State Hospital, a reputably haunted mental institution that inspired H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham Asylum and therefore sits in the core of local legend. In particular, this film gives Sylvan, who holds a degree in public history, a reason to delve into the complex and interesting backstory...

Infamous exploitation film producer Thomas Fries, hoping to kick start a slasher movie franchise comparable to Halloween or Friday the 13th, greenlit Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge, a project that retold Phantom of the Opera in a suburban mall with superfluous nudity, splatter effects, and several kung fu fight sequences. Quickly churned out with little care and even less in the way of budget, this film was soundly rejected by both critics and audiences; even fans of campy horror cheese...

Following the commercial disappointment of artistically ambitious films like Citizen Kane (1941) and the Magnificent Ambersons (1942), RKO began shifting its priorities towards workmanlike crowd pleasing instead of chasing Oscars. Among other things, this meant restructuring its B-movie division. Producer Val Lewton was brought in to oversee a series of films intended to compete against Universal's Monster line; this meant that each movie would be made with a tight budget, run for less than...

Shamelessly churned out to capitalize on the success of Shirley Jackson's megahit horror novel The Haunting of Hill House, this low budget thriller was given the legally distinct title of House on Haunted Hill in the hopes of tricking audiences into thinking it was an official adaptation. That should give one an indication of what to expect from the film, a gimmicky cavalcade of lowbrow cheese held down by the hammy charisma of Vincent Price and the workmanlike proficiency of director William...

Released during a period with increased competition from rival studios, Meet the Robinsons marks a transitional period in Disney's approach to animated feature films. The company had just bought Pixar and appointed John Lasseter as chief creative officer. Meet the Robinsons was already nearing completion when this occurred, but Lasseter had at least 60% of the film redone before it debuted in theaters to mild critical response and disappointing box office. While frequently written off as a...

Originally developed as a dramedy for Clark Gable, the success of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! compelled MGM to retool Harvey Girls as a musical romcom for Judy Garland. Boasting massive sets, lavish costumes, a saturated technicolor palette, and several elaborate song and dance numbers, Harvey Girls used all that frippery to tell a story about the wild west being tamed by the waitresses of a fast food restaurant. It was received with moderate critical praise, a healthy box office,...

The leader of The Three Stooges both on and off the screen, Moe Howard's comedic role in the troupe usually boiled down to driving the plot and handing out slapsticky abuse to his subordinates. The trappings of vaudeville all but demanded that at least one of the performers take on such a role; Moe might be the epitome of such a thing. Ryan is joined by Rachel for a close look at four Three Stooges shorts that prominently showcase Moe's abilities (this includes 1940's "You Nazty Spy!",...

A TV miniseries created by animator Patrick McHale for Cartoon Network, Over the Garden Wall focuses upon two siblings who are lost within a strange, mystical, and existentially-threatening forest. Its emphasis on dark fantasy and 1890's pop culture provided stark contrast to the other fare being produced for children's television at the time, something that many found to be refreshing. Over the Garden Wall was greeted with enthusiastic reviews, strong ratings, and a bevy of awards. It has...

Often perceived as the first Hollywood blockbuster, King Kong casts an undeniably long shadow upon movie history. Its special effects, soundtrack, and emphasis on larger-than-life spectacle established precedents that big tentpole movie releases still follow to the modern day. A number of its images rival Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Singing in the Rain, and The Wizard of Oz when it comes to Golden Age Hollywood iconography. Kong has never gone away, as evidenced by the...

While originally conceived as greeting card mascots with an accompanying toy line, the Care Bears debuted in a market where children's media was freshly-deregulated and immersed in shameless commercialism. It was perhaps inevitable that these characters would be spun off into an animated toy commercial that was barely masquerading as an entertainment property, but the success of the IP was far from certain. Still, despite its limited budget and rushed production schedule, the first Care Bears...

Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Titane is about a serial killer (Agathe Rousselle) who goes on the run after she kills her parents and gets impregnated by a car. She winds up impersonating the long-lost son of a firefighter (Vincent London) and the two ultimately form a symbiotic bond that's based upon their respective emotional needs. Titane goes to some grim places, touching upon the work of David Cronenberg and John McNaughton. Ryan is joined by Rachel for a...

This may be difficult to consider in an era where Disney is arguably the world's most powerful entertainment conglomerate, but there was a period where the company was in a precarious state (multiple periods actually, but we're talking about the postwar era). Disney was in massive debt in the late 40's and the company could've very easily gone under. The world might've become a very different place had the considerable investment in Cinderella had yielded a flop, but the 1950 film turned out...

Centering on two teens in the then-modern 1990's getting transported to the world of an idyllic (yet vaguely unsettling) 1950's sitcom, Pleasantville uses broad symbolic imagery to paint a picture about personal growth, the pressures of conformity, and the ever-lingering threat of authoritarianism. Gary Ross, the film's writer and director, was the son of a Hollywood screenwriter who was blacklisted by McCarthyism; that background infiltrates much of the movie's text and subtext....

A riff on the "supernatural board game" subgenre that was shot on a microbudget during the Covid-19 pandemic, Gatlopp focuses on four estranged friends who briefly reunite when one of them starts going through a tough divorce. Their awkward attempt to reconnect ultimately leads to them trying out the titular game, an experience that forces each of them to confront aspects of their lives they'd prefer not to acknowledge. Unfortunately for the players, Gatlopp promises damnation to anyone who...

Spongebob Squarepants was far from a sure thing when animator Stephen Hillenburg pitched him to Nickelodeon executives, but the program quickly became a gigantic hit that transformed the network, the children's television landscape, and the millions of kids who watched the show religiously. Combining well-defined characters with absurdist humor, vaudevillian gags, and a surreal reality, Spongebob inspired and enchanted a legion of children and adults. Ryan was never really swept up in the...

One of the most infamous celluloid turkeys of its time, the 1993 film adaptation of the Super Mario video game franchise suffered from a disinterested IP holder, thousands of rewrites, an annoyed and confused cast, and a disastrous shoot supervised by an inexperienced directorial team. The film bombed hard with both critics and the few people who willingly paid for a ticket, but the movie did clog up video rental shelves and basic cable timeslots, so it's not without its apologists. When...

Derived from the popular (and controversial) stage musical composed by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Norman Jewison's 1973 version of Jesus Christ Superstar is a deeply timely reflection of the spiritual and socio-political issues gripping the environment that produced it. While a box office success that garnered attention from prestigious award committees, Jesus Christ Superstar got ambivalent notices from both film critics and the men who wrote the songs used in the film itself. It also...

Based on the idiosyncratic comic series by Sam Kieth and William Messner-Loebs, The Maxx centers on a vagrant with delusions that he's a mighty superhero. While ineffective in the real world, The Maxx is powerful and important in the world of The Outback, a fantasy version of Australia that appears to be bleeding into reality. The Maxx's supporting cast includes "freelance social worker" Julie, a jaded rape survivor who helps/enables The Maxx. The main antagonist is Mr. Gone, a serial rapist...