1-Week Rental | Behind the Scenes Film Analysis

In an episode Laci calls "The Future Of the Empire" and Matt calls "Recording the Future,"  Load Bearing Beams  examines  Back To the Future, Part II  (1989) and  Empire Records  (1995). One a huge hit, the other a giant flop with a long afterlife on home video, and both a large source of internet chatter and memes. Back To the Future, Part II  was one of the first mainstream American movies to ex...

It's a super-sized Listener's Choice episode in which we cover THREE MOVIES! That's right, we watched all three  Austin Powers  films at the suggestion of a listener, and we dig deep into all three on this podcast.  First up, it's  Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), a low-budget movie with an unlikely premise that was a moderate hit and somehow spawned an immensely popular and pro...

Back before Johnny Depp sucked, he starred in a movie called  Blow  (2001), the story of a mediocre, uninteresting drug dealer who can do no wrong... until he can do no right! Does this film pack the emotional punch for adult Laci that it did for teen Laci?  Then, LBB examines Zack Snyder's  Watchmen  (2009), a bloated, confused, utterly fascinating adaptation of the classic graphic novel. Laci an...

A listener suggested  The Lost Boys  (1987), and LBB watches and reviews it. This movie is kind of delightful and, according to Laci, is a thorough and unrelenting look at the destructiveness of heroin addiction. Matt dislikes Haim, likes Feldman. ALSO: We debut our new recurring feature, the Mickey's Clubhouse Clubhouse, in which Laci pokes holes in  Mickey Mouse Clubhouse , a TV program for todd...

LBB is back for a new year! First up: It's the first  X-Files  movie:  The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998). Matt loved this television show as a teenager and, by proxy, loved this movie. What does Laci think, having never seen it and being only minimally familiar with the TV series? Also: Much discussion about TV shows turned into movies. Then, Laci reexamines  The Boondock Saints (1999), a movie...

SPOILERS for this bonus mini-episode! Matt and Laci, fresh from having seen  Star Wars: The Last Jedi , share their thoughts with each other. Matt's a huge  Star Wars fan, Laci until had recently had never seen the original movies but is a big fan of  The Force Awakens ... what did they think? Again, please do not listen if you haven't yet seen this movie. We SPOIL the porg out of this film. SPOIL...

Matt is finding it very difficult to think of anything other than  Star Wars  two days before  The Last Jedi  comes out, so the gang revisits the  Star Wars  saga by looking at  The Empire Strikes Back  (1980), widely considered the best film in the series. BUT FIRST it's Ron Howard's  Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas  (2000), a movie that takes the Grinchverse and expands it into directi...

Let's talk What About Bob : In this Frank Oz picture from 1991, Bill Murray plays Bob, and he is just so silly but you can't help but love him, the scamp! And Richard Dreyfuss is his cranky therapist who can't get his family to see how annoying his patient is, because the patient has followed his family on their vacation, see, but even though this is highly inappropriate and predatory behavior, Dr...

Laci and Matt return, if not better than ever then at least not diminished, to discuss the films  Jurassic Park III  (2001) and  My Girl  (1991).  First up, it's  Jurassic Park III , a movie selected by Matt because he loves the first  Jurassic Park and this one also has dinosaurs on an island, so it'll do. The Roth-Stokeses assess this movie and its place in the larger  Jurassic  canon, especiall...

Buffy  is a beloved TV show to many, but it doesn't mean s**t to Laci, who prefers the 1992 film [05:55] of the same name. It's the tale of a Chosen One cheerleader doing battle against the occult and being courted by 56-year-old Luke Perry. What about this movie so spoke to Laci as a young person, and how does she feel about it now? And how funky is your chicken?  Then:  Citizen Kane  (1941) [20:...

As an October hurricane heads for their house, Laci and Matt turn their attention to  Napoleon Dynamite  (2004) and  Blade Runner (1982), a set of movies about inscrutable men and the women who can't help but love them.  First, Laci and Matt tackle  Napoleon Dynamite [03:10], a movie about which Laci no longer knows how she feels, but which Matt calls "not unenjoyable." But does this collection of...

We welcome Sara and Steve Jones to discuss  A Little Princess (1995) [02:00] and  Red Dawn  (1984) [29:00]. We ran the gamut of topics in this episode: guerilla warfare, survivalism, what makes us cry in movies, chimney sweeps, the Ramayana, the Cold War, Jeff Goldblum's daughter from  The Lost World: Jurassic Park , amnesia,  Harry Potter , and much more. And is that Ser Davos, the Onion Knight,...

We discuss Stanley Kubrick's  2001: A Space Odyssey  (1968), one of Matt's favorite movies ever. Laci knew nothing about it, but was assured by her husband that its many puzzlebox mysteries would pay off in the end. Do they? We also discuss what predictions about the future got wrong and get to the bottom of whether or not we're all living in a computer simulation.  It (1990) is an annoyingly-titl...

Like the home video release of 1990's  It , we're splitting this episode into two VHS tapes. In cassette 1 we discuss Stanley Kubrick's  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), one of Matt's favorite movies ever. Laci knew nothing about it, but was assured by her husband that its many puzzlebox mysteries would pay off in the end. Do they? We also discuss what predictions about the future got wrong and get t...

Your married co-hosts debate Laci's grand unifying theory of movies. Must the movie have stakes? How big must these stakes be? (Big.) And can the stakes get bigger than they are in  All the President's Men (1976) [05:52], in which the president's top aids are tied to a burglary operation via reporters' digging? Together, we dig in. Then we fall in love with Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette i...

Drop of the Fred with the Sickness in this spooktacular examination of childhood mental illness and mindless consumerism. That's right, it's 1991's  Drop Dead Fred  (Rotten Tomatoes score: 9%) and 1978's  Dawn Of the Dead !  Again,  Drop Dead Fred  [02:48] has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 9%. Nine! Its reputation is far worse than any other movie covered on this show. Is it really that bad? Why is L...

What do we really know? Is the future predetermined? Are human beings really free? These questions and more are addressed and resolved in the two movie selections Load Bearing Beams,   episode 9: Alex Proyas's  Knowing  (2009) [03:30] and Amy Heckerling's  Clueless  (1995) [32:10]. Matt argues that even though  Knowing  is lumped in with the terrible cash-in movies of Nicolas Cage's later career,...

NOTE FROM 2024: Many years later, once we learned how to actually podcast, we took another look at GoldenEye with our pal Wade. Check out Episode 104 to hear a much longer discussion of the film, where at least one of the hosts changed their minds about it. LBB welcomes its first guests: romantically entangled young power couple Sam Hall and Wade Hymel. Sam and Wade join Matt and Laci to discuss t...

More fliffity-floo! Laci presents one of the best comedies ever made about an aging stage actress who takes a de-aging potion and then gets murdered by her husband but she can't die so she sticks around and continues her feud with a rival who took the same potion: Death Becomes Her  (1992) [02:00]. Why were movies like this so appealing back in the early nineties, and why don't they get made anymo...

It's our highly-anticipated Ampersand Episode! Laci & Matt take a look at the historical seafaring epic  Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) [02:55], and Laci puts aside her prejudice against blondes to embrace Paul Bettany's performance as Charles Darwin Stephen Maturin, then conducts some in-depth research into the number of Russell Crowe characters whose names begin with the le...

NOTE FROM 2024: Many years later, once we learned how to actually podcast, we revisited Beetlejuice. In Episode 89, we went back to Beetlejuice and had a much more informed conversation about it.  Are you ready for some whimsy? The show takes a deep dive into the films of Tim Burton after Laci picks  Beetlejuice  (1988) as her load-bearing beam and it leads to a sprawling conversation about how mu...

You're gonna need bigger ears to hear this gem of a half episode! In part A of episode 4, our hosts dive in to the world of "Jaws," (1975) which is not the name of the shark but still a weird thing to identify about the story (As Laci points out, it's like calling a slasher movie "Wrist."). What is it about this obscene bloodbath that made such a charmer for families, the original summer blockbust...

In space, no one can hear Matt and Laci scream at each other about the movie Alien (1979) [2:40]. Why are these intergalactic space travelers so blasé about their magical trip through outer space? What's up with Jonesy the cat? Will protocol save us all in the end? Will anybody back on Earth miss the crew members of the Nostromo after they're eaten by the alien [spoiler alert]?    Our hosts then m...

NOTE FROM 2024: Many years later, once we learned how to actually podcast, we revisited Halloween (1978) in Episode 92. Load Bearing Beams deeply regrets some of the skepticism shown toward the film Halloween in this episode. We have learned and grown. All we can do is forgive ourselves.   Like many born in the 1980s, Laci is (or was) a big fan of Steven Spielberg's "Hook" (1991) [02:35]. Matt saw...

NOTE FROM 2024: Many years later, once we learned how to actually podcast, we revisited both of these movies. In Episode 99 we went back to Dirty Dancing and in Episode 100 we went back to Star Wars. In the debut episode, Laci and Matt discuss the concept of load-bearing-beam movies, and then do a deep dive into their first selections. Matt chooses Star Wars (1977) and Laci chooses  Dirty Dancing...