2 Cents Critic

Tune in as the merriment continues on this podcast for the third week of December! Andy ( Fat Dude Digs Flicks Movie Podcasts ) is jumping back onboard to talk all about The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, the 2024 Christmas novel by Ally Carter that blends together romance with a cozy mystery in the mansion of a famed author who goes missing. The insidiousness of gaslighting, the comfy cheese o...

Tune in as the program keeps the holiday season rolling onward for the second week of December! This time around, filmmaker friend Robyn Zabukovec ( @TheFinalGirly ) hops back into her guest seat for a breakdown of Better Watch Out, the 2016 Christmas horror-comedy that follows a 17-year-old babysitter and a couple adolescent boys as they try to fend off a home invasion during Christmastime. An ar...

Tune in as 2CC properly embraces the holiday season with a full month of episodes to go along with that cheery theme! For this first week of December, Robert “Stew” Stewart ( STEW World Order ) is jumping back into his guest chair for a review and recap of The Nightmare Before Christmas, the 1993 stop-motion animation classic that takes us to Halloween Town and the shenanigans that its beloved kin...

Tune in as Rick ( Pixel Project Radio ) collaborates with Arthur for a review and recap of Pet, the 2016 thriller that uses its familiar premise of a man stalking a woman to deploy some interesting and unnerving twists and turns. The debatable efficacy of how this movie explores the psychology and the power play at the core of its tale, an autistic-coded reading of Pet that leads into a tangent ab...

Tune in as author and podcaster Brett Salter ( Irish Salt ) jumps back onto the program for a breakdown of The Game, the 1997 mindfuck thriller in which a mysterious corporation takes an investment banker who rules over his lonesome life with the fist of a control freak, then makes it their mission to rip away any grasp he has on what’s real and what’s manufactured. A quick and negative review fro...

Tune in as filmmaker Joshua R. Pangborn ( Sidekick Productions ) returns to the podcast for a breakdown of Marvel’s Agent Carter, the two-season MCU TV show that premiered in 2015 and follows secret agent Peggy Carter as she embarks on espionage missions with the help of a few allies while wrestling with the daily challenges and misogyny that come with living as a single woman in the 1940s. A disa...

Tune in as Jameson Pfeifle ( @sdfilmthoughts ) teams up with Arthur for a review and recap of The Hunger, the 1983 erotic horror film that follows a vampire couple, the accelerated aging that has suddenly plagued one of the partners, and the human gerontologist who gets caught up in their alluring and dark world. The neo-noir layers that are given off by this movie’s heavy atmosphere, playing arou...

Tune in as Vanessa Ondi ( Best Week Ever Podcast ) jumps back into her guest seat for a discussion on The Wedding Planner, the 2001 rom-com starring Jennifer Lopez as a diligent wedding planner whose latest gig sees her contending with a cheater, a stalker, a statue’s broken schlong, and other sorts of shenanigans. Steve being a douchebag (albeit one who’s relatively more bearable compared to the...

Tune in as Arthur’s friend Anna ( @formergleek ) rejoins 2CC for a breakdown of The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, the 2021 rom-com book whose fake-dating and grumpy/sunshine shenanigans are based off a Reylo fanfic that Hazelwood had written on AO3. Comparisons between the fanfic and the book, Hazelwood’s apparent lack of geographical knowledge, the frustrating stab that this romance tries to...

Tune in as Arthur’s buddy Cyn ( HEISTERS ) joins the podcast for a breakdown of The Invisible Guest, the 2016 mystery-thriller movie about a businessman who has to cooperate with a lawyer in order to come up with a sufficient defense that can prove his innocence after he’s been accused of murdering his lover in a locked hotel room. The debatable plausibility of some logistical bits and pieces in t...

Tune in as Dustin Holden ( Dustin Can Read & Watch ,  The Rewatch Recap ) collaborates with Arthur once again to review and recap Once Bitten, the 1985 vampire movie that takes its audience on a campy ride as a high schooler becomes the latest target of a centuries-old vampire who requires the blood of male virgins in order to sustain her youth and immortality. Bits and pieces of vampire lore...

Tune in as Arthur’s pal Robyn Zabukovec pops back up on 2CC for a discussion on Shallow Grave, the 1994 thriller that follows an obnoxious trio of British flatmates who descend into paranoia after dealing with the corpse and the big bag of money that have fallen into their laps. The black comedy that this film manages to smoothly blend in with its suspense, appreciation for onscreen blood that avo...

Tune in as Andy ( Fat Dude Digs Flicks Movie Podcasts ) hops back onto the podcast for a review and recap of the 2019 revenge thriller novel The Golden Cage by Camilla Läckberg, which follows a housewife who’s stuck in a loveless marriage and ends up embarking on a quest of ruthless retribution against the patriarchal forces that have been oppressing her for far too long. The ways in which this ou...

Tune in as Makayla ( Your Friendly Neighborhood Blerd ) jumps onto the podcast for a breakdown of First Kill, the 2022 lesbian vampire Netflix series that follows the forbidden romance between two teenagers—one who’s of the literally bloodsucking sort, the other who’s of the monster-hunting variety. It’s a shame that this only had the chance to stream for a couple months before the big red N sudde...

Tune in as Shawn Murphy ( Men Who Like Men Who Like Movies Podcast ) rejoins the program to review and recap Color of Night, the 1994 erotic thriller that takes us on a wild and atmospheric ride with a color-blind psychiatrist who gets himself caught up in a murder mystery and a steamy affair simultaneously. An intense BTS feud that led to different cuts of this movie being released, drawing inspi...

Tune in as Arthur’s pal Anna hops back into their guest seat for a deep dive into Upload, the Prime Video series that follows a technologically advanced near-future in which people have figured out a way to, well, upload their consciousness into a digital afterlife. Running for three seasons since 2020, this show, which feels reminiscent of The Good Place, has been renewed for a fourth and final s...

Tune in as Arthur’s pals Connor Kujawinski and Robyn Zabukovec return to 2CC for a review and recap of Final Destination 5, the 2011 horror movie that currently stands as the most recent entry in the over-the-top and gory FD franchise (that is, until Final Destination: Bloodlines releases next year). The career of the illustrious Tony Todd, Easter eggs that have sneaked their way into FD5, and P.J...

Jumping onto the show today is Arthur’s buddy Connor Kujawinski, the filmmaker behind multiple shorts like “Aspects” and “A Little Longer,” with the latter currently embarking on its festival run—one that boasts a recent premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival. Connor has already been a 2CC guest numerous times by now, so it’s great to bring him back around for an interview about their li...

Tune in as Jessica and Saunya ( Opinionated Lushes ) jump back into their comfy old guest seats for a review and recap of Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson, the 2020 sequel to the 2019 YA thriller A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. Jessica and Saunya had already joined in to discuss  that first book  precisely one year ago, so it’s splendid to bring them back and reunite with amateur detective and...

Tune in as LC and Joseph ( Midnight Movie Gang ) collaborate with Arthur for a dive into Feast, the 2005 creature feature horror-comedy that follows a group of bar patrons in Nevada who must contend with a few bloodthirsty beasts that have besieged their grimy and sweaty tavern. Whether this movie is purposefully putting a frat boy spin on Alien, the major role that Project Greenlight has in the p...

Tune in as DeVaughn Taylor (Specter Cinema Club, The Pod and the Pendulum) teams up with Arthur to break down The Butterfly Effect, the 2004 sci-fi timey-wimey thriller that follows college student Evan Treborn on his zigzagging quest to travel through time and give himself and his loved ones the happiest lives possible. The 2000s-era ways in which this deals with surprisingly dark material, the o...

Joining the program today is Alex Noyer, the writer-director behind the 2021 slasher horror movie Sound of Violence. This podcast had actually done a whole episode on that Jasmin Savoy Brown-starring film back in June, so it’s especially great to have Alex onboard here to learn more about his life and his filmmaking passion. His advertising background, the central role that synesthesia atmospheric...

Tune in as author AW Rene returns to the podcast for a discussion on Leech by Hiron Ennes, the 2022 novel that blends together Gothic horror, sci-fi, body horror, and post-apocalyptic fiction to create an ambitious and atmospheric tale about a doctor’s mission to investigate and eliminate a mysterious parasite that’s beginning to spread through a far-off and wintry chateau. Talking points for this...

Tune in as Seth Vargas (Movie Friends) comes back around to 2 Cents Critic for a discussion on Megamind, the 2010 DreamWorks Animation movie that puts its own deconstructive spin on superheroes and supervillains. The surprisingly clever jabs that it takes at incel culture, the connections you can draw between this flick and Despicable Me, and the sequelitis that Megamind has suffered from recently...

Tune in as Arthur’s buddy Anna hops back onto the program for a deep dive into Don’t Worry Darling, the 2022 psychological thriller that had been swamped in a notorious wave of media frenzy (remember the spit mystery, anyone?). But once you dig past the Hollywood hubbub, what do you get with this mindfuck-lite trip through a 1950s desert-set company town whose vision of idyllic suburbia just may b...