Look at us covering one of the whitest movies ever on MLK Day. Well, it's quite a film that happens to be about many compelling things: lying, cheating and masculinity. It's also legitimately funny. Swedish writer/director Ruben Ostlund has made a career out of filming the uncomfortable and he loves to show people who are trying to save face. In Force Majeure, we've got a marriage on the rocks after Johannes Kuhnke fails his family in a crisis, which brings about a bitter conflict with his...

Buster Keaton's silent comedies were classics, but they were also action thrillers. He was one of the greatest and gutsiest stuntmen/actors in history. That stuff is phenomenal, so the only real problem with The Navigator is the same as it was in Sherlock Jr last year. Namely, the movie just isn't all that funny. The Navigator's ending sequence has the most laughs and most of the best stunts though. And it helps that Stoneface has chemistry with Kathryn Maguire, who was also his lady love in...

We begin the 9th Annual Month Of Bev by chatting about a cult classic that features punks, Reaganomics and odd automobiles. Repo Man was Alex Cox's debut (Sid And Nancy came 2 years later) and it was also very early in Emilio Estevez's film career. The man who would basically stop acting in motion pictures about 15 years later is just okay here. He's joined in this sci-fi/comedy by veteran character actors like Tracey Walter and Harry Dean Stanton. The movie still touches Bev's Gen-X heart,...

We're in "let's look back at 2023" mode as we discuss our fave flicks of last year (so far) and also answer listeners' emails, tweets and YouTube comments. It wasn't a great 12 months at the movies, although we still have to see a lot of red-letter titles before we can make a final call on that. The writers' and actors' strikes were huge stories that might have long-lasting effects, but apart from the whopping successes of Barbenheimer, Sound Of Freedom and Taylor Swift's record-destroying...

To wrap up our podcasting year with a record-shattering 77th episode, Ryan is once again on a solo mission to review something that's considered a classic. And while it's always a pleasure to see Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, the  reason to cover The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer is that it represents our first Shirley Temple (Black) flick. She's one of the title characters---you can guess which one---while Cary plays the other title character in another in his long line of rom-com hits. He was...

We post our final podcast of this year about a Christmas movie a day early, even though The Lion In Winter is only tangentially a Christmas movie at all. James Goldman wrote a complex King Lear story based on real people in director Anthony Harvey's authentic, dirty, unkempt Oscar-winner. Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn lead a fabulous cast (well, except for one person), as they fill the movie with sound and fury, although perhaps all the machinations take them back where they started. We...

Not only are we reviewing Christmas movies this month, but Trading Places makes for the 2nd of 3 screwball comedies you will be able to find on this channel by the end of December. And like those other two, John Landis' romp tells a good story, but isn't very funny. Dan Aykroyd was established as a star, but Eddie Murphy was just starting his legendary movie career while Jamie Lee Curtis was making a successful transition from horror into comedy. Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy and plenty of others...

Television marathons helped A Christmas Story become a huge favourite this time of year, but Bob Clark's holiday comedy didn't need to be stuffed down people's throats. It earns the rep of being one of the greatest Christmas movies by being funny and sweet. Jean Shepherd's joyful memories of his own life as a kid growing up about 80 years ago in Indiana offset some of the bad memories, whether it be a furnace or a Farkus. The story is episodic by design, but the running storyline is of course...

We're taking a short break from covering Christmas movies by talking about Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker. Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke are tremendous as the battling teacher and student. Both won Oscars as Bancroft's Anne Sullivan teaches manners and ASL to Duke's deaf and blind Helen Keller. The real Keller was intelligent, stubborn, ferocious and---disabilities or not---also a bit of a jerk. Sullivan pushes back though and DOESN'T have the patience of Job. This is a hard job, especially...

Holy moly, the 553rd ice-fish of Have You Ever Seen kicks off the Christmas season as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau bring their crabby charm to the title characters. But the 2 comedy legends are only Grumpy Old Men with each other. They're quite sweet to everybody else, especially to each other's kids and---most of all---to the new babe in town, Ann-Margret. The love story between her and the 2 old coots is not an angle we fully believed in, partly because the decades-long feud is is the...

The early '40s was a hugely successful time for director Howard Hawks and his Ball Of Fire stars, Barbara Stanwyck & Gary Cooper. This isn't their crowning achievement (partly because it just isn't as funny as other comedies each of them made), but it's fun and the love story is certainly enjoyable. Hawks was talented enough to excel at making movies in nearly every genre, but he was always in his element when it came to the laughs. Cooper's typical stiffness works well for this nerdy...

Even though John Sturges is one of the most underrated directors of all time, remaking Seven Samurai could have turned out to be a big mistake if it failed. Instead, The Magnificent Seven is fun, cool and exciting...and it has a layer of sadness too. Sadness and desperation have been unintentional themes in our movies this month, actually. Still, it's hard not to make your western cool when you've got names like Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson in the cast. Who's...

For the 4th and final time, we're re-reviewing a movie we discussed 10 years ago. Some films age badly, while some become more relevant. Her is extremely relevant! We didn't have any idea just how addicted to devices our culture would get when this movie came out in late-2013. We're a society of people who are lost in their phones, so the science fiction in Spike Jonze's Oscar-winning story might soon become science fact. In the futuristic Her, Joaquin Phoenix is a lonely writer living in Los...

Hollywood studios hadn't made very many major movies about AIDS before 1993, so Philadelphia represented a fairly safe way into this difficult subject. Many considered Jonathan Demme's picture soft and weak, but Ryan's solo show tries to explain why his approach was the right one. Casting stars like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in the leading roles was a huge step to drawing people in. And while Hanks won his first Oscar as a gay man wrongfully dismissed by his law firm, Denzel is just as...

There's no better way to debut Ismail Merchant and James Ivory on this channel than to chat about their finest film. The Remains Of The Day also represents the first time Emma Thompson or Hugh Grant have come up on Have You Ever Seen...although Anthony Hopkins HAS been in one classic Oscar winner that we've covered. Something about lambs. In this case, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's layered screenplay adapts Kazuo Ishiguro's acclaimed novel about repression through exemplary professionalism, even...

Do you like taboo subject matter in your movies? Well, the 547th edition of Have You Ever Seen is filled with it. There's pedophilia, suicide, violent sex fantasies, masturbation, infidelity and so much misery...yet writer/director Todd Solondz somehow also made Happiness entertaining. It's complicated material and it's more honest than most movies are about the horrible people within, but they're relatable human beings. Even the pedophile is. We got quite personal in this review and we...

Glenn Ford is in Gilda more than Rita Hayworth is and the story is more about his character than hers, but the film still belongs to the gorgeous redhead. She was a true movie star, who had sass, brains, marvelous screen presence and remarkable sex appeal. It's easy to see why the prisoners in The Shawshank Redemption loved watching Charles Vidor's movie over and over again. It isn't a perfect '40s noir though. It has terrific dialogue, but the story is overstuffed. The happy ending isn't...

During this horror-laden month of movies that featured plenty of serial killers, Norman Bates tops 'em all for cinematic infamy. He may be infantilized, but this sick human being sure can wield variously effective weapons when he feels the need. Now, coming up with a quality sequel to not only a Hitchcock movie---but also to the infamous Psycho---was a huge ask, but Richard Franklin did an admirable job of making Psycho II an effective suspense thriller. Just like the first flick, this story...

The Wicker Man is a cult movie about a cult, so that alone makes it a good choice for Scary Movie Month. Robin Hardy's film is really more of a mystery than a horror extravaganza though, as the pious and intentionally unlikable policeman from the mainland (Edward Woodward) slowly finds out just how dedicated the Scottish islanders are to their Lord (Christopher Lee). These people love their apples. They're also liberated, sexy and even like to have fun on Summerisle, but they're often...

This year's Scary Movie Month has turned into a month of undisputed horror classics, especially in these one-Ryan shows. Halloween was discussed on October 9th. Now it's time for one of the best-made, freakiest frightfests ever. William Friedkin's mega-blockbuster won 2 Oscars---it should have won more---and it remains beloved in the eyes of many, even if repeated viewings dampen the skin-crawling moments a little. Not that The Exorcist couldn't terrify the uninitiated, even if the...

Nope is about spectacle, exploitation and selling a product, no matter how that product feels about being sold. The alien---if it IS in fact an alien---is one of the most unique creations in recent history. Which is fitting because Jordan Peele is one of the most original filmmakers going. Still, just like Quentin Tarantino, Peele always finds clever ways to mix in dozens of pop culture references. He also knows how to tell a good story and he's becoming quite a visual stylist. His 3rd film...

Ryan talked alone about the classic slasher flick Halloween on Monday. The solo episode this time gets into the business of one of its offshoots...Friday The 13th. In fact, all 12 of the Fridays are discussed here, so this is not a traditional review of one particular film. Iconic mass murderer Jason Voorhees---and his mother before him---successfully killed people at the cursed Camp Crystal Lake for nearly 30 years...and people kept paying money to see them do it. Even though the first one...

It was nearly a year ago that Ryan monologued about Rob Zombie's Halloween. Well, our 540th episode was an overdue time to monologue about John Carpenter's legendary original. In this one-man show, you'll get a record number of asides, but also some theories that might answer questions that people have had about the movie for the past 45 years. This father of all modern slasher movies is influential because of its style and its themes. It's also beautifully made (especially considering the...

Our 8th Annual Scary Movie Month has arrived and we kick it off with a film that has several legit frights and some "I'm creeped out in my own basement" staying power. Our 539th episode talks about demonic possession, child endangerment and other weird things. Director James Wan knows how to use jump scares in The Conjuring, but he also knows how to build tension and he really knows how to shoot a horror movie. This Malaysian mogul based his freak-fest on a real story and he cast solid actors...

We covered our first Ozu movie earlier this year and our first Mizoguchi review dropped just 3 days ago, so it was way past time to talk about Federico Fellini. The flamboyant Italian made several classics, but 8½ seems to be the favourite for many fellow filmmakers who've followed in his footsteps. This is about as influential as any movie we've discussed in years. It's a director's dream too (sometimes literally), as it's filled with fantasies (good and bad), self-doubt and anxiety. While...