Rotten Rewind

2022 was a banner year for unexpected critical misfires. Critical darlings like David O'Russell, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Sam Mendes, Noah Baumbach, and Darren Aronofsky saw their latest films either crash and burn on arrival or quickly disappear after a tepid response. It's hard to say which outcome is worse! But the movie that's endured the most polarizing response yet is undoubt...

On-set drama. Recasting. Divorce. COVID shutdowns. Bad accents. Spitgate. How do they shit??? These are just some of the many controversies that befell Olivia Wilde’s sophomore feature “Don’t Worry Darling.” Podcast regular Johnny Langan makes his triumphant return to the show to unpack the slew of DWD controversies and neverending plot holes. Is it really as bad as the critics said it was? Is Har...

In the mid-aughts, Tony Scott was written off by most film critics as a studio showman who valued style over substance. Ten years after his untimely death, Scott's legacy has been reclaimed by new generations of fans and critics as one of the most visionary filmmakers of his time. The 2000s were a transitional period for Scott as he evolved his trademark visual panache and hyper-kinetic action...

Is there a more versatile, prolific American director working today than Steven Soderbergh ? In 1989, Soderbergh became the youngest American director to ever screen a film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and changed independent film forever with his provocative debut "sex, lies and videotape." Since then, Soderbergh has directed over 35 films and several television series, wo...

Art-House and Grindhouse join forces for part three of our Vulgar Vibes miniseries. Cinematographer Matthew Hayes joins the podcast this week to chop it up about a pair of ultra-violent meditations on masculinity and free will. First up, it's VOD maverick John Hyams's surrealist fourth entry in the Universal Soldier franchise with "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning" starring Sc...

Filmmaker and musician William Breen returns to the podcast to unpack the hot mess that is Baz Luhrmann's maximalist take on "The Great Gatsby." Headlined by Leonardo DiCaprio as the titular Gatsby, Luhrmann's adaptation divided critics at its Cannes premiere 10 years ago, but went on to clean up at the box office and build a small but vocal cult following. But what ultimately we...

In 1994, Quentin Tarantino was on top of the film world. He had just won Cannes with "Pulp Fiction." He was riding the cult success of "Reservoir Dogs" and the Tony Scott -directed "True Romance." At the same time, Oscar-winning provocateur Oliver Stone desperately needed a hit after the box office failure of "Heaven and Earth." Months before "Pulp Fict...

What makes a foundational movie experience? For critic and podcast regular Logan Kenny , it was seeing Joseph Kosinski's meditative tech opera "TRON: Legacy" in IMAX 3D when he was 9 years old. Logan returns to us for an episode discussing two Vulgar Maximalist cult classics that polarized anti-digital critics at the time of their releases over 10 years ago. First up, it's The Wa...

Vulgar Vibes continues this week with two cyberpunk thrillers from two world-renowned auteurs. First up, it's Abel Ferrara's feverish adaptation of William Gibson's "New Rose Hotel." Starring Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken and Asia Argento, Ferrara's take on the short story was heavier on vibes than plot, centering much of the action around a prostitution ring moonlight...

In 2003, Vincent Gallo brought his second feature "The Brown Bunny" to the Cannes Film Festival. The rest is history. The so-called controversy surrounding Gallo's film became bigger than the film itself. It was called indulgent. Embarrassingly sincere. Most famously, in the words of Roger Ebert , it was "the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival." And that...

Hell is what you make it. Or maybe it's just an alternate reality created by a prolific Lovecraftian author. For our penultimate installment in the Vulgar Horror series, we're taking listeners back to the mid-90's for a pair of unhinged bangers starring Sam Neill . First up, it's John Carpenter's meta take on a Stephen King -esque horror writer with 1994's "In the Mout...

Director Robert Zemeckis could have never predicted that his 1992 box office disappointment "Death Becomes Her" would endure 30 years later as an essential entry in the queer cult classic canon. Pitting Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn against one another as frenemies in a quest for eternal youth and casting Bruce Willis as the hapless alcoholic they're fighting over, Zemeckis created an...

We're kicking off our 3rd Annual Rotten Horrors ™ with two podcast favorites! Writer and one of our in-house Queer Cinema commentators Kaycee Felton-Lui joins us for a look back at Tony Scott's feature debut "The Hunger," starring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon . At the time of its release in 1983, Scott's debut was panned and written off as a lurid exercis...

When Sony gave Paul Verhoeven $100 million to adapt H.G. Wells' "The Invisible Man," they might not have been expecting a nihilistic, hard-R slasher, but that's what they got! Kevin Bacon underwent a notoriously grueling shoot with groundbreaking VFX to give what is still the most bleakly realistic depiction of the source material to date. Many directors have offered their take o...

Our five week descent into the grotesque madness of Vulgar Horror comes to an end today on the podcast. For our special Halloween send-off, we're finally diving into the 100% rotten career of musician, filmmaker and certified Wife Guy, Rob Zombie. Over the last 20 years, Zombie has amassed one of the most singular horror filmographies in the canon. Critics have almost unanimously given his wor...

When looking at the canon of "Vulgar Auteurism," you'll notice that most of the directors mentioned are... surprise... men! Specifically, white men. But because the very concept of "Vulgar Auteurism" is so loose and open to interpretation, we decided to dedicate the next month to female filmmakers that have, at one point or another, directed a critical misfire that honors t...

For our second installment in the Vulgar Female Gaze miniseries, we're interrogating the often polarizing sub-genre of women doing crime. Writer Jaime Bolker joins us for a look back at two ripped from the headlines comedies: the 2001 cheerleaders turned bank robbers comedy "Sugar & Spice" and Sofia Coppola's pivot into the true crime genre with 2013's "The Bling Rin...

TW: This episode contains discussion of rape and sexual assault. Some filmmakers court controversy wherever they go, but few have been as polarizing as Catherine Breillat and Lena Dunham . For our third installment in the Rotten Female Gaze miniseries, we'll be dissecting two films from Breillat and Dunham that offered an uncompromising and often uncomfortable look at the complexity of female...

For our final Vulgar Female Gaze installment, we're looking back at a pair of underseen 90s dark comedies. First up, it's photographer Cindy Sherman's first and only foray into directing with the 1997 horror comedy "Office Killer" starring Carol Kane, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Molly Ringwald . After that, we're switching gears for the late, great Adrienne Shelly's sophom...

The American Western experienced a resurgence in the 90s after the critical and financial success of "Dances with Wolves" and "Unforgiven." At that time, Sam Raimi was more known for his groundbreaking work in horror, making him an unlikely choice to spearhead a Western revisionist action film with genre heavyweight Gene Hackman. But that was the only director star and producer...

"For those that understand they're living the last days of the world, death acquires a different meaning. The extinction of all reality is a concept no resignation can encompass." This week's guest, Michael Aghajanian, has described Ridley Scott's 2013 bomb "The Counselor" as a "flagship Rotten Rewind movie." This is, after all, a movie that opens with Mic...

⁠ SUBSCRIBE NOW ⁠ for early access and exclusive bonus episodes at WWW.PATREON.COM/ROTTENREWIND Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke made six films together over the course of a decade. They also had a tumultuous romantic partnership that culminated in a 19 month trial where Locke developed breast cancer. Locke, an Academy Award nominated actress, turned to directing in the late 80s, but was never able...

Vulgar Neo-Noir continues this week with one of the most controversial and divisive films - and filmmakers - of their time. 1980s Hollywood was steeped in Orientalism, predominately seen in action films like "Flash Gordon" and "Big Trouble in Little China" and futuristic sci-fi landscapes like the iconic imagery of "Blade Runner." We're riding solo today for an in...

"You don't have to lick my ass. Just fuck me." It's hard to think of a better quote in the canon of genre master Brian De Palma. Today on the show, we finally get the opportunity to dive into one of our favorite directors' filmography by discussing two of De Palma's most divisive critical failures: the 1998 Nicolas Cage conspiracy thriller "Snake Eyes" and the 2...

SUBSCRIBE NOW for early access and exclusive bonus episodes at WWW.PATREON.COM/ROTTENREWIND Between the one-two punch of "Predator" and "Die Hard" and going to federal prison for illegal wiretapping, vulgar auteurist John McTiernan satirized the genre he helped redefine with Hollywood's biggest star and screenwriter. The result? According to McTiernan , himself: “Last Action Hero was the worst tim...