1-Week Rental | Behind the Scenes Film Analysis

It's Springtime for Laci and Matt as film historian Harry Marks ( @lobbyintros on TikTok) joins the show to go over Mel Brooks's first movie: the classic comedy The Producers (1968). Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder give two of the funniest performances ever… but what about the rest of the movie? Is it laugh-out-loud-funny in 2024? Or is it hopelessly dated? Or is there possibly a third option? Harry's...

As the world prepares to embrace its new Frozen Empire, lovingly brought to us by the good people at Ghost Corps, we take a look at a movie that was kind of Ivan Reitman's unofficial Ghostbusters 3 : 2001's Evolution . Um, so… yeah, this movie is something else, I tell you what. David Duchovny trying to be Bill Murray. Julianne Moore falling down. Selenium sulfide. A magical periodic table. But he...

The week Robert Downey Jr. has finally secured his coveted Oscar, we take a trip back in time. The year is 1993. A movie called  Heart and Souls is released, in the aftermath of what Downey must have assumed was his Academy Award for the movie  Chaplin (1992). We take a big long look at RDJ's career and also examine the curious '90s phenomenon of angel movies.  Next week: The movie that was suppos...

The written word... that's the real magic, isn't it, you guys? Don't you just love cracking open a great book and being transported to a wondrous world?  The Pagemaster  (1994) is going to insist that you do love this. Loudly, and repeatedly. Laci and Matt take a look at this bizarre '90s live-action/animation flop and try to figure out exactly what Turner Feature Animation was going for.  There's...

Hey folks, as we announced previously, we are taking this week off due to work requirements. We're coming back and better than every on March 8, 2024 with a brand-new episode about the wild Macaulay Culkin book movie  The Pagemaster  (1994).  As always, thanks for supporting our dumb podcast. If you haven't already, please check us out on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@loadbearingbeamspod And why n...

In what is quite possibly the most snoogans episode we've ever recorded, we examine Kevin Smith's Dogma (1999). At Laci's behest, we take our maiden voyage into the View Askewniverse to see what this controversial, transgressive, downright RUDE film has to say about religion, politics, and the state of things in Clinton's America at the end of history.  Next week: We're taking a week off. We'll be...

Wade Hymel and Matt Stokes sit down for a free-wheeling discussion about different approaches to songwriting, creativity, collaboration, and recording. Wade also talks about his experience as a working musician, what going on tour is like, and what it's like to play music on a cruiseship. Then they talk about Wade's great new album  Who Said That?  Hear Wade's amazing new album WHO SAID THAT? on A...

Hear Wade's amazing new album WHO SAID THAT? on Apple Music , Spotify , or wherever else music is streamed. Or you can purchase the album from Bandcamp . Load Bearing Beams welcomes back Number 1 Friend of the Show, "Jack" Wade Hymel, to reconsider GoldenEye (1995). Wade first brought this movie to the show's attention on an episode in 2017, when both Laci and Matt panned it. Have their hearts tha...

Hey folks! Laci and Matt here to tell you that we were just on the great  In Love With Horror  podcast, and you can catch that episode right now! It's a deep dive into the classic 1981 slasher  My Bloody Valentine  and its 2009 remake.  If you're not already listening (In which case: the fuck?), it's a show hosted by a married couple, the lovely Kristie and AJ. They cover all things horror—movies,...

At the suggestion of our friend StitchAndStoryTime, we take a look at 1991's  Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves . This movie was a colossal hit in its day, and it's got a little something for everyone—tree houses and homemade gadgets and traps for the kids, sword battles for Dad, romance for Mom, and a healthy amount of the Dark Arts for Matt Stokes. This movie is nuts and we had a lot of fun talking...

We head back to good old Hollywood, USA: Golden Era for a look at one of the most beloved American films of all time, 1942's Casablanca .  You hear this all the time about old, black-and-white movies, but this thing feels incredibly modern, and with much to say about the world of 2024. We discuss our personal histories with it, Matt's story of getting into classiv movies after watching it for the...

We take a trip to Montreal, to check in with the mild-mannered Dr. Nicholas "Oz" Oseransky (Matthew Perry) and his scary neighbor, Jimmy the Tulip (Bruce Willis). Can you even imagine what shenanigans these two get up to? We'll tell you all about them in our discussion of the 2000 hitman/dental comedy  The Whole Nine Yards .  Most of this episode is a fierce argument about whether or not all the M...

We have to postpone our episode this week because of some ridiculous weather events that basically threw our lives into chaos. Here's what happened: It got cold in Louisiana . No one knew what to do, so they shut down the schools, the roads, everything. Three days at home with the kids, unable to work, or think, or podcast. So we have to push back our schedule and do our episode on The Whole Nine...

Once there was a time when  Star Wars  was just the name of a movie, and not the most toxic subject ever to hit the internet. Well, we yearn for that time, listener... so go with us on this journey back to the Skywalker homestead and get ready to harvest some moisture as we return to the very first movie we ever discussed on the show:  Star Wars  (1977). Among other things, Matt reiterates for the...

To celebrate finally getting to episodes 99 and 100, we're going back to the very first two movies we covered on  Load Bearing Beams and give these two classics the full LBB treatment they deserve. First up, it's  Dirty Dancing (1988), one of Laci's favorite movies. It's a charming dancey melodrama with some surprisingly poignant political commentary that is much easier to see in 2024 than it was...

Happy New Year, y'all. We're ringing in what promises to be the most cursed year ever with our very first mailbag!   Time stamps:   00:04:40 — What are our new year's resolutions for the podcast and for our movie watching?   00:12:08 — Where's the weirdest place we've made whoopee?   00:12:57 — Which movie or TV show was the biggest waste of our time?   00:19:11 — What was the most surprisingly go...

Fine. Fine. No problem at all. We'll talk about the actual movie. Also: Happy holidays! Thank you for a great year! We'd normally have an episode coming out on Friday, Dec. 22, but we're taking a break and shall return on Friday, December 29 with a very special mailbag episode. And after that, we're on to episodes 99 and 100, where we'll revisit the movies covered on our very first episode (Dirty...

When Laci wins a Golden Ticket, she invites Matt as her plus-one for her super-secret tour of Willy Wonka's factory... and she's violating her NDA by bringing you along too! Have you ever wanted to know the functional purpose of the Chocolate Room, where everything is edible? Or why the city of Munich seems to have such fanatical attachment to the Wonka Corporation? And what exactly Mr. Wonka is d...

Get out your stapler gun and empty your shitter, because it's time to look at the holiday classic National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) in extraordinary detail.  Laci's seen this film dozens of times, while Matt had only seen it once, decades ago. To prepare, he watched the entire Vacation series, and he has much to say about the merits of the individual Vacation films, despite no one askin...

Matt had Laci watch the "beloved" "family" Christmas-present-hunt movie  Jingle All the Way (1996). So… did she have a good time? Listener, she did not. But you'll have a good time hearing them commiserate about the experience for two hours. Why would a movie cast Arnold Schwarzeneggar to play a normal man? When is it inappropriate to buy a Christmas tree? And wouldn't this movie have been better...

Hey folks! If you hadn't heard, we took this week off (on account of Thanksgiving). We'll be back in one week (Friday, December 1, 2023) with our episode about the Arnold Schwarzenegger family comedy Jingle All the Way , co-starring Future Darth Vader. Thank you so much for supporting our ridiculous show.  Matt's been doing some video reviews of recent movies on our YouTube channel. Check out: The...

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't cure its depression. We discuss this sad fact with our friend Drew (a.k.a. Drewbie Doobie's Movies, @drewbiedoobiemovie on TikTok) by covering a movie he loved growing up, Wolfgang Petersen's The NeverEnding Story (1984). Yes, this movie traumatized a generation of children, but to look upon it now is to see into an alternate dimension of unbelievable p...

Friend of the Show Cinematic Joshua ( @CinematicJoshua on TikTok) joins us for a rollicking conversation about the cult classic Ashton Kutcher time travel picture The Butterfly Effect (2004).   Laci, Matt, and Joshua discuss the career of Ashton Kutcher, the influence of the Final Destination series on this movie, and the many different time strands this movie juggles, as well as the merits of the...

Man, if you weren't there in the Philadelphia department store scene back in '87, then you just wouldn't get it. Luckily, the movie  Mannequin  (1987) is here to fill you in: It's a battle of two behemoth stores—the mom-and-pop-owned Prince & Company and the tacky upstart Illustra. At the center of it all is Jonathan Switcher (Andrew McCarthy), a dreamer with a heart of gold who falls in love with...

We head back to Haddonfield, Illinois for another encounter with Laurie, Annie, Lynda, Michael, Sheriff Brackett, and that wacky Dr. Loomis. That's right, we're taking another (much longer) look at one of Matt's favorite movies, John Carpenter's  Halloween  (1978). Untouchable classic this picture may be, but Laci was not a fan back in 2017. Surely time has softened her impenetrable heart... or ha...