DESTROY ALL CULTURE

“Threes! They’re absolutely impossible!” is a thing no one in Mission: Impossible III says at any point. Instead, characters say things like “Copy” and “Roger that” and “I’m going to die unless you kill me”. M:I 3 is a bit of a paradox: both the platonic ideal of a Mission Impossible film and a frozen remnant of the Abrams era, it ends up in an unsatisfying middle zone. The stunts are inspired but...

tom cruise looking like he’s just lost a battle with his bowels at a crucial moment. Mission: Impossible II. Is it the best movie in the franchise? The most coherent? The coolest? The most enjoyable? The one entry that isn’t openly misogynistic? The one that didn’t decide on Dougray Scott as a plausible villain? No! But it may be the most significant entry in the franchise for its introduction of...

not flying but hovering Has Tom Cruise ever been younger than he was in the first Mission: Impossible movie? In the literal sense, yes. But in the very specific rhetorical sense that I’m asking you to accept here, no. He has never looked more baby-faced and callow than he does in the first installment of this improbably long franchise. Are there really 29 years between this film and M:I - Dead Rec...

the self-preservation society Oh, Cool Britannia. A young Michael Caine gathering a gang of thieves in colour-coded Mini Coopers to stage an endless car chase through the streets of Turin? We used to be a proper something or other. Listen below or find us on your podcatcher of choice. DAC Episode 408 - The Italian Job (1969) Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan Download

finally, a dead lion. Just in time for Marchoween (or Marchowe’en for your purists), it’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O’Brien’s culsterpiece (that’s a word now) of queernema (that’s also a word now). Once more, friend of the show D.J. Kirkbride pops by to talk about the movie and debate the moral worth of Frank N. Furter’s actions. How do Adam and Aidan respond to D.J.’s outrageous accu...

Is Marvel back in 2026? Was it back in mid-2025, when Fantastic Four: First Steps hit theatres? If it’s back, where did it go? Under the ocean with the corpse of the Celestial from The Eternals ? Off in some other numbered dimension of the multiverse? Is there, as we speak, another universe in which Marvel makes a blockbuster every other week, to such acclaim that society has reorganized itself co...

nom nom nom Sometimes you come up with a pitch-perfect satire of consumerism. Then you put Michael Moriarty in the lead role and give him a toupee. Life’s funny that way. Listen below as we wade through The Stuff, or find us on your podcaster of choice. DAC Episode 405 - The Stuff (1985) Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan Download

a live dog with a live dog sidekick. Joining us! On this week’s podcast! Is comics editor and writer D.J.! Kirkbride! D.J., our resident Superman co-authority (along with Adam) is following up on his triumphant appearance on our Superman (1978) episode. What did we think of James Gunn’s take on the big blue palooka? Find out by listening below, or on your podcaster of choice. DAC Episode 404 - Sup...

feels like a dead lion trying desperately to revive itself here. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 came and went (much like Captain Batel, heyyy-yo), leaving a lot of puzzled Trek fans in its wake. Holodeck murder mysteries? Zombie Klingons or something? Statue’d-up Marie? Sure, whatever. Adam and Aidan discuss the third season of ST:SNW, ruminating on the highs and lows of this entertaining...

this man will never be a dead lion. What do you do after you make a movie about a man who needs constant jolts of adrenaline to keep his heart beating? You, uh… steal his heart and replace it with an artificial model that needs constant jolts of current to keep it beating? Yeah, that’s the ticket. Crank 2 (or Crank: High Voltage , or maybe Crank 2: High Voltage ) can’t quite match the impact that...

a live dog would like a word with you. Many people claim that the cinema of 2007, with its countries not intended for seniors and forecasts of blood like satanic weathermen, is the peak year for 21st century cinema. Of course, those snobby cineastes fail to account for the previous year, which produced what may be the purest jolt of adrenaline ever committed to movie screens. I’m talking about Cra...

Welcome friends (and enemies! We know you’re out there) to Episode 400 of Destroy All Culture. For this episode, we forgo our usual focus on a single movie to talk about our history with movies and media in general, from Star Wars and Wizard of Oz to the beclowned state of the current blockbuster. We try - oh, how we try - to sum up a life lived immersed in film, and we wonder what makes a great m...

when he’s raised hell you’ll know it, sister. If you’ve listened to our previous episode on Rian Johnson’s Brick, you’ll already be aware of thematic and artistic touchpoints between Brick’s highschoolers-in-a-Hammett-novel premise and Miller’s Crossing, which could fairly be described as the Coen Brothers’ attempt at a Hammett pastiche. The question is, how do you like your pastiche? Period-appro...

he wants to see the ‘pin. A cynical teenager in scuffed shoes gets a mysterious phone call. An enigmatic message is left in a locker. A blonde girl lies dead in a culvert. Oh, and everyone talks in the argot of a ‘40s noir film. After all, doesn’t high school feel like an unending crime scene for a monstrous act that is always about to happen? Brick ! It’s the hidden foundational text of Destroy A...

a live dog beset by dead lion (maternal superego located in a doll). It seems bizarre that it’s taken so long for this podcast to get around to Lucky McKee’s May , the 2002 cult favourite about a young woman who, faced with relentless imperfection in the world around her, decides to make something whole and perfect. Results are mixed. Are Adam and Aidan mixed on May ? Listen below to find out, or...

White Nights! The nights are white. The country is red. The politics are red, white and blue. The lives are separate and ongoing. The saying is you and me. The pirouettes are plentiful (11 in total). The Baryshnikov is Mikhail, the Hines is Gregory. The meet is cute. The couple is odd. The dances are amazing. The music is kind of lousy, tbh. The Russian is restless. The American is regretful. The...

sky dog and the lion of tomorrow When Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out in 2004, much was made of the fact that director Kerry Conran had landed the job on the strength of a short film painstakingly made on his computer. The feature length film, starring a staggeringly audience-enticing combo of Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, arrived on a wave of hype and positive revie...

the definition of live dogs. DAC Episode 394 - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan Download

you know, i’m something of a huckleberry myself. Sometimes a great performance turns an average movie into a classic. It’s hard to imagine Tombstone without Kilmer’s grand and tragic take on Doc Holliday, a man whose vanity seems to be consuming him from the inside throughout the film. Tombstone may be Kilmer’s crowning achievement. Listen to us talk about it below, or find us on your podhuckleber...

you know what, pain actually does hurt. Unless you’re dalton. Never mind the remakes, here’s the original in all its glory. Adam and Aidan get a little rapturous about the bizarre Road House world of bar bouncers and the cooler so legendary that his name evokes hushed awe. A dirtbag John Wick. A bar brawl bodhisattva. A small town saviour. A man who really doesn’t want to rip your throat out, but...

dig if you will this picture. Prince Rogers Nelson was a brilliant musician, a stylish-as-hell dresser and a singular person. He was not a great filmmaker or screen presence, but Purple Rain mostly functions as a concert film with a plot and some conflict strung between the numbers. And for that alone, this one is worth your time. Listen to Adam and Aidan make sense of the whole thing below, or fi...

If you sit down and watch a run of Val Kilmer movies, eventually you will discover a sub-sub-genre that I call In It for the Val - that is, functional and mediocre movies that are only elevated by the presence of a Val Kilmer performance. Is Willow one of those movies? Ha ha, yes. Despite the craft (especially the Phil Tippett creature animations), George Lucas’ script feels like a light scrubbing...

ADAM: Is there a movie more important to the history of cinema and my psyche than Real Genius ? AIDAN: Real Genius is a hall of mirrors in which a Conradian secret sharer may be glimpsed flashing through the ‘80s-era staple of the raunchy campus comedy, a proto-Ferris Bueller, and an advertisement for popcorn. ADAM: Val Kilmer is a dancing god among men who should have shown up in White Nights alo...

This is the first installment of our series of episodes on the films of Val Kilmer. In accordance with Mr. Kilmer’s final wishes, we are calling the series Valmerpalooza. In the wake of World War II, George Orwell wrote a searing novel of government repression and propaganda called Nineteen Eighty Four, in which the ideological polarity of the post-war order was satirized and refigured as a world...

proof that superman has a special interest in railroads. Dah-da-da-dah, Su-per-man Dah-da-da-dah, SUPERMAN For this week’s Destroy All Culture, we invite D.J. Kirkbride, late of our Robot Jox episode, to talk about Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman. Our hot take of a conclusion: this is a pretty good movie, despite how strangely it’s structured and how it whips back and forth across tones and genres....