Four Play

Four Play's new Sword-and-Sandal arc takes us back to the age of Hollywood epics with 1959's legendary Ben-Hur. The film weaves in the birth of Christianity into the background of the heartbreaking story of the titular character Judah Ben-Hur, played by the legendary Charlton Heston. The most expensive movie ever made when it released, Ben-Hur achieves a scope of sets, costumes, extras, and an ico...

Ben Wheatley's 2011 Kill List is an obscure film, but one with surprisingly deep themes of class conflict, PTSD, the pressure of everyday life, and the oppressive nature of society. The movie is cloaked in a veneer of hitman action and occult activity, but can be confusing or unsatisfying if purely viewed and interpreted at face value. Richard, Thorin, and Monte discuss why they love Kill List esp...

This week, Four Play watches our first Korean film: Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum directed by Jung Bum-shik in 2018. The film is part of the found footage horror genre, popularized by other movies like the Blair Witch Project, but takes an extremely modern approach using YouTube and livestreaming to make the premise seem fresh and relevant today. While the storyline may be a weak point, Gonjiam delivers...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's breakout film Cure released in 1997 and, over the years, has become both a cult classic and darling of modern directors. Uniquely disturbing and brilliant, Cure begins as a police procedural and then dives into a totally unique atmosphere of dread as the mesmerist Mamiya confounds his rival, the detective Takabe. The film uses visuals and background sound to hypnotize the audien...

Four Play's Scary Deep Cuts arc begins with a brooding, psychological horror film that few have seen: Session 9 by director Brad Anderson. Filmed at the derelict Danvers State Medical Hospital in Massachusetts using props left in the building, the movie tells the story of an asbestos removal team losing their sanity in an apparently haunted building. Anchored by solid performances by Peter Mullan...

The timeless classic Casablanca from 1942 closes our Money Shot arc with one of Roger Ebert's top films of all time. Featuring iconic performances from Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains, the film deftly portrays the confusion and chaos of World War II even in a seemingly far-flung Moroccan city. Thorin, Richard, and Monte discuss the themes of self-sacrifice, lost love, and duty to...

Our Money Shot Arc continues with Richard's pick of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. While this film borrows some ideas from The Godfather, it instead focuses on the lower-level underbelly of organized crime, showing the brutal and unglamorous side of organized crime. We also explore the connections between this film and HBO's The Sopranos, Joe Pesci's terrifically terrifying performance, and the fil...

The Godfather, an American epic gangster film which debuted in 1972, is Thorin's selection for the Money Shot arc. Hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, director Francis Ford Coppola weaves an engaging story centered around the transformation of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone into a hardened mafia boss. Marlon Brando stands out in his role as the titular "Godfather," but the rest of the e...

Our "Money Shot" arc features each of our hosts selecting a film that they believe the rest of the group will enjoy. We begin with MonteCristo's pick: Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park. Based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, this film opened to rave reviews and box office success. It also remains culturally relevant and memeable to this day. However, the film is not...

We conclude our Four Play Spit Roast arc with a film that Roger Ebert inexplicably gave four stars, director Marc Webb's (500) Days of Summer from 2009. Richard, Thorin, and Monte all loathe this film for its poor writing, acting, and non-existent character arcs. A relic of hipster culture from the late 2000s, the hosts discuss the subculture from which this movie emerged and how it ends up as ant...

A campy werewolf murder mystery cut from the cloth of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None," 1972's The Beast Must Die mashes up blaxploitation and horror courtesy of Amicus Productions. Richard selected this movie for our Spit Roast arc and defends its virtues while acknowledging its awkward pacing, unnecessary scenes, and infamous "werewolf break." The casting of classic British actors li...

Guy Ritchie's 2005 film Revolver is Thorin's selection for the Spit Roast arc, a film that tries to meld a British gangster caper with high-minded metaphysical themes. Allegedly caught up in spiritualism by his wife Madonna, Ritchie's creates an overloaded mess of a film that attempts to do everything at once and ends up doing it all quite badly. The criminal subplots overcomplicate a vapid and si...

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Daniel Day Lewis' seminal final performance came in Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread from 2017. The film subverts expectations in the best possible way, appearing to be a 1950s period drama about a fashion designer and morphing into a bizarre love story that explores the darker sides of both masculinity and femineity. Phantom Thread is incredibly dense, nuances, and brimming with beautiful co...

The Master, released in 2012, might be Paul Thomas Anderson's best movie. Featuring stellar performances from Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, The Master offers an artistically rich portrayal of a cult with parallels to Scientology. Character-driven and difficult, the film presents audiences with enigmatic characters, bizarre relationships, and unique symbolism. While certai...

Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 film Magnolia holds a special place in our hosts' hearts, serving up an ensemble cast playing loosely-connected characters in California's San Fernando Valley. This "slice of life" film is composed of a series of vignettes that reveal themes of regret, intergenerational trauma, confronting one's deep-seated problems, and more. While some may find it overly dramatic or l...

Hard Eight kicks off our Paul Thomas Anderson arc as we focus on his first feature length film, which very few people have seen. Boasting a stunning cast of many actors before they became famous, including John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Gwyneth Paltrow, Samuel L. Jackson, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the film delivers extraordinary performances. The movie was made on a small $3 million budget a...

Denis Villeneuve's two Dune movies from 2021 and 2024 have created a massive cultural impact and are being considered a new generation's "Star Wars." Thorin, Richard, and Monte pierce the hype of these films after multiple viewings and discuss how they lack a thematic core and end up pedantically issuing a message instead of raising thoughtful questions or being open to interpretation. The films c...

Denis Villeneuve's 2015 film Sicario focuses on the drug trade and the law enforcement war on the Mexican-American border, leading the viewer into a morally ambiguous quagmire where the ends always seem to justify the means. An outstanding cast is led by Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin offering some of the most iconic performances of their careers and lending weight to a relatively...

In Four Play's second Denis Villeneuve film, we go back to the 2013 thriller, Prisoners. Starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal in what may be career-defining performances, Prisoners foreshadows the first season of True Detective by exploring a terrifying mystery undercut by dense symbolism. Thorin, Richard, and Monte dissect the compelling moral quandaries that serve as the foundations of the...

We start our new Four Play arc with our first focus on a director, Denis Villeneuve. Lately celebrated for his Dune films, we dive into his back catalog and begin with 2016's Arrival. Like Dune, Arrival is an adaptation of a science-fiction text, and takes an intellectual approach to the concept of first contact and the ensuring geo-political consequences. Ultimately, Arrival focuses on personal d...

The Robert Redford-led Sneakers from 1992 serves as an interesting time capsule to the late Cold War era and the dawn of computer hacking. However, the movie mostly fails in delivering a consistent tone and can't figure out whether it would rather be a high-stakes thriller or a comedic caper that relies on the quirkiness and synergy of its characters. Thorin, Richard, and Monte laugh at the hilari...

Sidney Lumet's 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon focuses on an intimate cast of characters during a tense hostage negotiation after a robbery gone wrong. Touching on American social issues and adapted from a true story, the film provides a vehicle for a sympathetic powerhouse performance from a young Al Pacino. The movie deals with modern themes, such as the distorting power of the media and the implica...

The 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair presents Pierce Brosnan as the slick, titular character indulging in a heist dripping in male fantasy. John McTiernan directs a film, in the downswing of his career, that could have been much more if it focused principally on the cat and mouse game between Brosnan and Renee Russo. The film is beautifully shot and revels in the splendid aesthetics of New Y...

Michael Mann's 1995 film Heat finally arrives on Four Play, an inevitable addition to the show since it's one of all of our hosts' favorite films. Not only an excellent heist movie, Heat is unbelievably well-crafted with characters and a scope that smacks of Shakespearian or Greek tragedies. Richard, Thorin, and Monte discuss the themes of criminality, compulsion to vocation, and the satisfying co...