Legends Podcast

Director David Cronenberg is best known for mind-bending body horror in films like Scanners, Videodrome, and The Fly, but he made his first "comic book movie" in 2005, an Academy Award-nominated adaptation of a graphic novel - and we do mean graphic. Starring Viggo Mortensen as a small-town diner owner whose mobster past catches up with him, the film was a modest success both financially and criti...

The Matrix Trilogy redefined action movies, but by the third film in the franchise it had begun to topple under its own weight. The film's creators, the Wachowskis, seemed to recognize this and went on to other projects, forswearing any future sequels. However, based on the profitability of the franchise, rumors of a reboot persisted, either with or without the creators' involvement. And so a four...

Robert Zemeckis was an unemployed movie director at the start of the 1980s, but by the end of the decade he was one of the most successful blockbuster directors with films like Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? under his belt. He got his big break from Michael Douglas, who hired Zemeckis to direct an action-adventure romantic comedy film starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner. The movi...

As a holiday treat, we're taking a break from our usual format and laying down a commentary track for one of our favorite movies! In the wake of Spider-Man: No Way Home becoming the highest-grossing film since 2019 and the biggest Sony release of all time, we're celebrating the dawn of the Spider-Verse with a real-time discussion while we watch the movie together! Grab a bagel, put on your sweatpa...

Bob Clark's 1983 film A Christmas Story has become a holiday classic, but for most kids born in the '80s, a Red Ryder BB gun was not at the top of their wish lists. We wanted something a little more high-tech - the Nintendo Entertainment System. HBO Max's latest original film, from Goon director Michael Dowse and novelist Kevin Jakubowski, updates this age-old tale for the millennial crowd, with h...

The Christmas rom-com movie genre got a much-needed update in 2020 from Hulu with the release of Clea DuVall's semi-autobiographical coming-out comedy-of-Yuletide-errors. Filmed earlier that year just prior to the Covid shutdown, the Pittsburgh-shot holiday flick starred Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as the lead couple. Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Mary Holland, Dan Levy, Mary Steenburgen and...

J.R.R. Tolkien's massively popular fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings, was long thought to be unfilmable due to the size and scope of the story and the technology limitations of the times. Kiwi director Peter Jackson proved them all wrong by shooting all three movies back-to-back in sixteen months at 150 locations and soundstages across New Zealand to the tune of $280 million. The films collectiv...

Director Joe Carnahan has given us intense action before in films like Smokin' Aces and The Grey, but he takes it to the next level in this 2021 Hulu original film. Actor Frank Grillo is a guy who knows how to beat 'em up - he's even gone toe-to-toe with Captain America - but he brings his A-game to this arcade-inspired action comedy. You know we had to do a time-loop movie, right? Legends Podcast...

The stars of Star Trek: The Next Generation made the jump to the big screen with Star Trek: Generations, though they were somewhat overshadowed by William Shatner's Captain Kirk - good thing they killed him off! For their first "stand-alone" feature film, Captain Picard and crew faced off against their biggest threat - the Borg - as they travelled back in time to ensure that one small warp flight...

Fall back in time with Legends Podcast! All month long we're talking about time travel, paradoxes, and having your daughters save reality.   29 years have passed since Bogus journey was released. In this new world, do we need more Bill and Ted?? We dust off a new addition, to an old classic and see if it is any good this time around!?   This is Chronovember! For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek...

We're celebrating the return of our time travel theme month with the return of director Terry Gilliam, who last appeared during Chronovember with his 1981 film Time Bandits. This time around, we've got Bruce Willis acting against type as a stoic inmate sent back in time to discover the source of an apocalyptic  virus and Brad Pitt acting against type as the motor-mouthed mental patient who may or...

Legends Podcast is pressing pause on Chronovember to talk about Denis Villenueve's latest visually stunning reimagining of a beloved Eighties classic film based on long-thought-to-be-unfilmable sci-fi text! Frank Herbert's 1965 novel was a groundbreaking achievement in the genre, but David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation was a commercial and critical failure. With Villenueve's film getting a simultan...

Legends of Halloween is rounding out the month with a Guillermo del Toro classic. This Spanish-language coming-of-age ghost story, set in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War, is among del Toro's most critically-acclaimed films, along with its spiritual successor, Pan's Labyrinth. Now, we're collecting slugs, swigging baby-flavored rum, and playing with unexploded ordinance for El Espinazo del Diablo...

Legends of Halloween is casting a spell on you with a sexy teen witch movie that turns 25 this year. Starring Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Rachel True, along with two stars of 1996's other horror hit, Scream, Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich. The movie became a cult classic, with a long life on home video leading to a 2020 sequel movie and inspiring a Katy Perry song. Now, we're getting in touch with...

We're continuing Legends of Halloween with… A real throwback to the inception of the paranoid thriller.  Creepy neighbors in a gothic NY apartment building and formulating distrust of everyone you should.  What's the worst that can happen?  Satan himself slips you a ruffie and doesn't pull out … Rosemary's Baby   For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legen...

We're kicking off Legends of Halloween with… well, Halloween! John Carpenter's 1978 film starring Jamie Lee Curtis ushered in the classic era of American slasher films. With the 12th movie in the franchise coming out later this month, once again starring Curtis, it's easy to forget that the original was an independent film, made on the cheap for just over a quarter million dollars. Co-written by D...

One year after their successful reboot of Mission: Impossible, Paramount Pictures went back to the well of classic '60s TV action series with The Saint starring Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue. Based on the best-selling book series by Leslie Charteris, international super-thief Simon Templar has been played by nearly a dozen actors, including Vincent Price and Roger Moore, with Regé-Jean Page set to...

In 1991, Walt Disney Pictures released a live-action comic book movie - decades before their Marvel films - based on the 1980s graphic novel The Rocketeer by Dave Stevens. Itself an homage to 1920s and '30s action serials, Disney hoped to jumpstart their own Indiana Jones-style franchise based on the high-flying adventurer. The film starred a relative unknown, Billy Campbell, in the lead role, and...

Forty years ago, two friends sat down for dinner. Starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn as fictional versions of themselves, Louis Malle's film has become a cult classic. Now we're sitting down to feast on My Dinner with Andre. The restaurant, as they say, is history!    For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek.com   You can find us on iTunes under ''Legends Podcast''. Please subscribe and give...

The "Fast and Furious" franchise was firing on all cylinders in 2011 when it released its fifth installment. Far from the Point Break redux of ten years before, the films had evolved from their street race-centric origins through a series of side-quels, only really getting around to a proper follow-up to the first film by the fourth overall outing. In the hands of director Justin Lin, the series t...

This week, we're doubling down on Soderbergh with his "Ocean's 7-Eleven" movie from 2017. Starring Channing Tatum and Adam Driver as two possibly-cursed brothers who plan to rob a NASCAR race, this down-and-dirty heist flick rounds out its cast with a Southern-drawl sporting Daniel Craig, two years ahead of his turn as the detective in Knives Out. While the film didn't exactly make off with the bo...

This week, we're betting on the 2001 remake of the 1960 Rat Pack classic Ocean's 11 to deliver some solid Aug-Heist fun. Directed by Stephen Soderbergh and starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Julia Roberts and more, the film scored at the box office and won two sequels and a spin-off. Numerically speaking, the film was the fifth highest-grossing movie of the year, with a w...

This week, we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of the movie reboot of the classic television series Mission: Impossible. Starring Tom Cruise as secret agent Ethan Hunt of the Impossible Mission Force, this Brian De Palma-directed film scored the third-biggest box office haul of 1996. Cruise returned as Hunt for five more films, with two more on the way, making him the longest-running actor to p...

This week, we're going back to the early days of the Coronavirus lockdown, which posed an interesting problem to filmmakers. How do you make a movie during a deadly pandemic when everyone is supposed to stay at home? While many productions were put on hold, writer Steven Knight took a dare and wrote the script, and director Doug Liman shot it in 18 days with an all-star cast. The result was Locked...

Fifteen years ago, a would-be summer blockbuster became an early example of a viral internet hit after the film's title was announced. Starring the already meme-worthy actor Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent tasked with protecting a witness on a flight from Hawaii to LAX, only to find the flight besieged by venomous serpents, the film's online notoriety did not translate to box office success I.R....