Mixed Bag

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃 That's right, it's the spooky season again and we've invited the foe of the podcast Mike Bryant back to talk about 90s nostalgia 'Casper' (1995) starring Bull Pullman and Christina Ricci! Afterlife therapist Dr. James Harvey and his daughter Kat move into an old mansion, and soon Kat meets Casper, the ghost of a young boy who’s “the friendliest ghost you know.” But not so fr...

No need for a spit-take! You read that correctly, it's our Don't Worry Darling episode. We're getting into the (miss) Flo of the 2022 blockbusters with this special episode, covering the controversy-ridden psychological thriller starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles and directed by Olivia Wilde. A 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his g...

It's our final episode of You Must Remember Mixed and we've got some zany brothers to send us off! That's right, It's the Marx Bros' A Day at the Races (1937) (we incorrectly attribute it to '35 in the ep, our bad!) Doctor Hugo Hackenbush, Tony, and Stuffy try and save Judy’s farm by winning a big race with her horse. There are a few problems. Hackenbush runs a high priced clinic for the wealthy w...

With Matt away, Cass and James will play! The Quick Mix returns for a significantly shorter episode where we discuss See How They Run, The Amazing Race, The Devil and the Dark Water, The Terror and I'm Glad My Mom Died. We'll all be back next week for a full episode on our final entry of You Must Remember Mixed.

You Must Remember Mixed continues with the 1947's Best Picture winner Gentleman's Agreement! A magazine writer poses as a Jew to expose anti-Semitism. This super yikes premise stars Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and John Garfield. Will the well-meaning 40s film hold up or be horribly dated? Directed by Elia Kazan (On The Waterfront, Streetcar Named Desire), join Matt, Cass and James as they contin...

It's the first episode of 'You Must Remember Mixed' our season of looking back into the 20th century and picking some mixed bags from Old Hollywood! Kicking off our series is the 1948 film Rope, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart. Two men attempt to prove they committed the perfect crime by hosting a dinner party after strangling their former classmate to death. Can Hitchcock...

Go Speed Racer, go! We're racing into this week with the action packed Speed Racer (2008) by The Wachowskis, selected by our new guest Fynn Bodley-Davis! A historic flop of its release, Speed Racer took the shine off the Wachowskis when it first appeared but going back and opening the hood, there's a lot going on in this machine of metal. Is it incoherent and spluttering oil, a sleek automobile or...

If you're an Oscar completionist and need to see all the Academy-Award nominated performances of that year, you technically have to see Bombshell (2019)! Featuring a star-studded cast of Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and introducing Make Up, join Matt, Cass and James as they see if this examination of the FOX news scandal is a gripping biopic or a cash grab capitalising on an impor...

Mmm thank you veryyy muuuuch  For your patience! Apologies that this was uploaded later than normal, we recorded ahead of schedule and then Cass and James just went off and decided to have a lovely holiday before editing and scheduling it in. But now, without further ado, we return to the wonderful world of Baz this week with Elvis, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, returning to his true-true...

It's Pride Month in America and we thought we'd invite along an incredible guest, Aimee Smith, wave our colourful flags and watch the lesbian cult film But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) starring Natasha Lyonne, Clea DuVall, RuPaul and New Zealand's own Melanie Lynskey! "Megan is an all-American girl. A cheerleader. She has a boyfriend. But Megan doesn’t like kissing her boyfriend very much. And she’s p...

I feel the need... the need for speed! With TOP GUN: MAVERICK being a colossal hit in the Box Office, the Mixed Bag team decided to visit the original, a film none of them had seen. They were not familiar with such iconic names as Iceman, Jocker and Goose. We truly were in for a treat. Did James, Cass and Matt enjoy the homoeroticism of this Tony Scott classic? What about the propaganda for the mi...

*a gentle whisper* Gatsby... It's the final episode of 'All That Baz!' (for now...) it's 2013's The Great Gatsby! Starring Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his final boyish charm roles, Tobey Maguire as pining Nick Carraway, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, Joel Edgerton as her hubby Tom and THE TALLEST WOMAN ALIVE Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker. Chuck on that green light and get borne back ceasele...

There was a Baz, a very strange enchanted Baz… It’s our 75th episode and we’re celebrating with another one of our original picks when we first created this podcast, a film that truly represents the term All That Baz, Moulin Rouge! Made in 2001 with Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, Moulin Rouge’s impact on culture was indelible. But is it any good? Twenty-one years later, Cass, Matt and James turn...

*Extremely stereotypical larrikin voice* 'STRAYA! We've got dingos, we've got shrimp on barbies and we called over Hugh and Nicole to do a bit of the ol' pretend! It's the first episode of All That Baz with his 2008 epic Australia. Available now on Disney+ Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order...

What's that?! A film before the early 00s?! Here at Mixed Bag we realised we had some recent movie bias so we're going back in time to the swinging 60s, where the fashion was chic, the love was free (debatably) and Breakfast was at Tiffany's. It's also where white men felt a lot more comfortable donning makeup and performing yellowface. Can this smash hit starring Audrey Hepburn, adapted from a sh...

🎉 Happy Oscars Day! 🎉 In keeping with the theme of those little gold men, we're going back to 2018's Green Book and dissecting whether this Best Picture winner was deserving of the top spot and if not, how bad or mixed is it really? Just like this podcast, this movie was "inspired by a true friendship". Don't know the movie, he's the rundown (thanks to Letterboxd) Tony Lip, a bouncer in 1962, is...

*French accent* Ahh the podcast. Where dedicated listeners form a parasocial relationship to disembodied voices who chat in week in, week out. But this is no ordinary week, this episode we're joined by Catherine Gavigan-Binnie to chat about the movie adaptation of The Spongebob Squarepants Movie!  Made in 2004 and marking the end of series creator  Stephen Hillenburg 's run with Spongebob, the Spo...

"There are whole movements I wrote, imagining us meeting again and again, in different lives, different ages..." The time has come, we're finally covering the Wachowskis. Directed by Lana & Lilly Wachowski and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Perfume) Cloud Atlas is... well... what is it? Over to you Letterboxd description! "A set of six nested stories spanning time between the 19th century and a dis...

69 (nice) (OK so technically we're only on 65 episodes because of some reuploads and a promo ep for Apocalypse Songs but Podbean told us it was 69 and we recorded a whole episode about 69, so you're getting episode 69) It's time for some late 90s Cruel Intentions, babyyyy.

Its birthday season for two of our hosts (Cassandra and Matt) so what better way to reflect back over the years than a film that does that very thing in its storytelling. It's time for the 1997 Romy and Michele's High School Reunion starring Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino Janeane Garofalo and Alan Cumming. Two not-too-bright party girls reinvent themselves for their high school reunion. Armed with a bo...

🗑️ IT'S TIME TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH 🗑️ It's finally here, the episode that'll make you go Gaga, House of Gucci (Ridley Scott, 2021). We wanted to start 2022 with a bang and what better way than a tale of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately...murder. We don't consider ourselves a particularly ethical podcast so we didn't hold back. Can anyone wake up Jeremy Irons? What is Jared Leto doing?...

It's (just after) the most wonderful time of the year! That's right, we're just finishing up the tail end of the silly season and so it's time for our yearly tradition of reviewing a Christmas film with friend of the pod, Lucas Neal. This year, he's chosen something a little controversial: Home Alone 3 which follows a new kid, eight-year-old Alex (played by Alex D. Linz). Our guest has thrown down...

Born from a real life tragedy, this 1997 faux-Disney musical is a wild ride of strong liberties to Russian history, complete with a magical Rasputin with a deranged Christopher Lloyd. Does the charm of Meg Ryan and John Cusack shine through the stilted rotoscoping or should we say do svidanya to Anastasia and her conmen buddies? The last of our personal picks, before we get to our Christmas tradit...

A police detective is in charge of the investigation of a brutal murder, in which a beautiful and seductive woman could be involved. It's the lurid, erotic neo-noir Basic Instinct. Dropped in 1922, this box office smash made Sharon Stone into a star and perpetuated some pretty tired and problematic gay and bisexual narratives. Likes are you've heard about THE scene but is the film itself any good?...

Here's there... the Phantom of the Opera! (2004) 🌹🥀 When camp bat-nipple director Joel Schumacher joined forces with the exceedingly OTT Andrew Lloyd Webber, it should've been a match made in heaven. And yet, The 2004 version of Phantom of the Opera is in some camps despised and most definitely mixed. What about Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum didn't do it for audiences? And can the combined force...