The Kulturecast

The Doctor of Podcasting is joined by Karl Mamer and Dr. David D. Perlmutter for Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford's Joe Turner is a CIA "reader" who steps out for lunch and comes back to find his whole office murdered. He spends three days running from his own agency, with Faye Dunaway as his unwilling ally and Max von Sydow's Joubert as the assassin who may be the most ho...

It opens on Day 2, with a cough in the dark. This week on Required Viewing, we put Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011) under the microscope — the cold, procedural pandemic thriller that spent a decade as a well-made what-if, then climbed back up the rental charts in the spring of 2020 as the whole world's homework. We get into Soderbergh's refusal to dramatize (he dispatches one of his Oscar winn...

We'll be honest; neither of us expected the AI apocalypse to be fought from a diner booth. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Gore Verbinski's first film in nearly a decade, sends Sam Rockwell's ragged Man From the Future into a Los Angeles diner for his 117th attempt to recruit the world's least likely resistance. Bryan had a blast; Chris found it more uneven, a film with more ideas than it knows wh...

A billionaire breaks the world and then demands a medal for trying to fix it — welcome to 2026. This week The Kulturecast teams up with Mike White of The Projection Booth to dig into Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger (2026), the "comedy of catastrophic proportions" that hands Tom Cruise his strangest role yet: oil baron Digger Rockwell, the most powerful man alive, racing to prove he's humanity's sav...

We'll be honest; we both spent a good chunk of the 2000s watching grown men sit down at a kitchen table they'd regret, and neither of us thought much about the man holding the clipboard. Primetime, the narrative debut from Ren Faire documentarian Lance Oppenheim, does — casting Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the Dateline correspondent who turned sting operations into appointment television. Bry...

You're gonna need a bigger boat. This week on Required Viewing, we wade into Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) — the film that invented the summer blockbuster, emptied the beaches of an entire generation, and pulled it off precisely because the shark wouldn't work. We get into the happy accident at the center of it: a malfunctioning mechanical fish that forced a 27-year-old Spielberg to hide his mons...

I'll be honest; I've never expected much from a video game movie, and the Resident Evil franchise alone has given me seven reasons not to. However, Zach Cregger, the director behind Barbarian and Weapons, has done the unthinkable — he's thrown out Leon, Claire and the games' plots entirely, and sent Austin Abrams' medical courier Bryan into Raccoon City for one very long night. The result is a lea...

Is it even a movie? That's the question Barry Lyndon has provoked since 1975 — three hours of scenes so composed they look less like cinema than oil paintings that happen to breathe. This week on Required Viewing, Dr. David D. Perlmutter — "the Prof" — drags Stanley Kubrick's most beautiful, most divisive film to the table: the one even Kubrick devotees can't agree is a film at all. We get into th...

If you missed last week's Rob Zombie goes Haddonfield edition of the show, this week should make as little sense to you as someone watching this movie without having seent the first one. On this episode of the Kulturecast, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the show to continue talking about Rob Zombie's foray into mainstream horror along with discussions about so much more. Become a supporter of...

It was the most expensive movie ever made, the punchline of a thousand headlines, and a flop so infamous it got its own nickname. This week on Required Viewing, we bail out Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995) and study it from every angle — separating the film that's actually on screen from the runaway-budget legend that swallowed it whole. We get into Mad Max on the open ocean, t...

The last thing the world needs in 2026 is yet another Halloween film but, to be fair, the last thing the world needed in 2007 was yet another Halloween film, especially one directed by Rob Zombie. Given that the film does in fact exist, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the Kulturecast for the first time to talk all about the finer points of reboots, Rob Zombie, and a whole lot more in this over...

From suburban horror to the back end of the Cretaceous, the American genre picture keeps finding new ways to burn down the cul-de-sac. The End of Oak Street, the latest from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, is a studio tentpole carrying an arthouse thesis, offering Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a marriage coming apart at the seams while something much older comes down the street. Al...

Two guys, a week in wine country, and a whole lot of avoidance. This week on Required Viewing, we uncork Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) and study it from every angle — why a shaggy road-trip comedy about a failed novelist and a fading actor became the defining midlife-male-sadness movie of its era, and what it's really pouring underneath the pinot. We get into Payne's gift for making you laugh...

Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study is a brand new sub-feed within The Kulturecast main feed where Dr. David D. Perlmutter and The Kulturecast's Doctor of Podcasting Chris Stachiw talk all about filmic topics through the lenses of a different film, tv series, or pop culture topic each Thursday. On this Episode Zero: Syllabus, the good doctors sit down to discuss the thesis behind the show, what mi...

From Train to Busan to the far-flung future with cloning and fascism, Korean cinema spans the genre gamut. Mickey 17, the latest film from Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho, is the latter, offering a look into the future with Robert Pattinson playing two roles as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Along with a cavalcade of character actors, it attempts to take to task fascism, biotech abuse, and more, to unsuccessful...

As the MCU barrels towards the inevitable ultimate crossover event that is Avengers: Doomsday, we must first check in on everyone's friendly neighborhood webhead. Once again starring Tom Holland, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is fourth film featuring the MCU's take on Spidey, with 100% less multiversal madness, thankfully. Along for the ride are Punisher, Black Widow, and maybe even an X-Man or two; T...

Battle Los Angeles is one of those forgotten sci-fi films that toed the line between war and alien invasion, doing something that few films since have: create a novel and compelling world for an alien invasion to occur. Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris to talk war, aliens, and what happens when the two are combined. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kultur...

While it may be simplistic to say that the Blackberry died at the hands of the iPhone, it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate. That death, however, was a very beautiful corpse as one might imagine due to Blackberry device becoming so ubiqutous as to have a nickname: "Crackberry". Join Chris, Dr. David Perlmutter, and Mark Stachiw as they talk all about the film as well as the history surrounding it an...

Last year's Superman was a genuine suprise, especially for those amongst us who had soured heavily on the previous attempt at a unified DC Universe with Snyder's Darkseriousverse. The hope was real that James Gunn at would be enough to point the ship in a new, more interesting direction. Unfortunately, Supergirl is not that and barely lives up to even the smaller successes of Superman while attemp...

Jackass has been a part of pop culture since the show first aired on MTV back in the pastoral years of the year 2000; 26 years later, the Jackass boys are a bit older but still up to, for the most part, their old tricks. While the group has shrunk (and grown) over the last two decades, the rambunctious stunts and pranks still remain, even if Jackass: Best and Last is effectively a glorified clipsh...

Sci-fi has taken many forms as a genre, and since it happens to be a genre that both Dr. Perlmutter and Chris have an affinity for, why not cover one of the true classics. While those who saw Forbidden Planet in theaters may not have realized that it was merely an amuse bouche for the more pop culture pliable Star Trek, the film is definitely one worth talking about and reappraising from a modern-...

Zombie films are a dime a dozen these days, for both good and for bad. For every Shaun of the Dead there's a hundred Walking Deads, everyone's favorite show to hate watch. With Train to Busan, however, there's no hate watching as it's one of the finest examples of how you can innovate the zombie genre even after all of the ground has been tread. Texas Tech's Dr. David D. Perlmutter and K-Drama ant...

At this point in his career, a Spielberg film should be an event worth heading to the local multiplex to check out; should being the key phrase. Couple that with a return to the subject matter of aliens that seems like an equation for cinematic success...right? The Projection Booth's Mike White joins the episode to talk all about Spielberg's latest extraterrestrial film entry and whether it holds...

While I may not be a Gen-Zer, I can most definitely get down with their brand of horror, especially if Backrooms is any indication of the quality and concept of their take on the genre. Contrast that with a "horror"-comedy franchise that's returned from a long justified and much needed absence in Scary Movie, and that makes for a hell of a double feature or at least two very apropo weekends at the...

We're running it back with some films we've already watched with a Robert Eggers film that has become a modern day classic: The VVitch. Starring Anya-Taylor Joy as Thomasin, she along with her family live in 1630s New England which may or may not be under the sway of a witch in the woods. Thomasin and her family are doomed to find out whether or not the witch is real or not. Dr. David. D. Perlmutt...