DESTROY ALL CULTURE

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....

a dead lion who has a tale to tell. If you threw James Foley’s At Close Range into a centrifuge, its constituent parts would probably sift out into 75% exceptionally mean neo-noir, 5% stealth inspirational courtroom drama and 20% Madonna’s hit single “Live To Tell,” which chimes through every scene like a snooze-proof alarm notification on somebody’s phone. The main reason to revisit this film is...

John Hughes famously wrote the script for Weird Science in only two days, but it’s likely that he was carrying around this particular fantasy in his head for at least a couple of decades. How else do you characterize a story about horny adolescents who create the perfect woman in their bedroom? Granted, most raunchy ‘80s teen comedies don’t escalate the stakes into absurdity in the same way that W...

somehow, still, a live dog. Before Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan rebirthed the Rocky franchise with Creed , but after Sylvester Stallone kicked around the corpse of his own creation in Rocky V, there came the odd bridge of Rocky Balboa, a wistful and occasionally charming examination of what happens in the decades after the balloon of fame has slowly leaked into something wrinkled and dusty....

now there’s a live dog. Did you watch Goodfellas back in 1990 and think “Hey, this should be a wacky comedy with Rick Moranis and Steve Martin”? If so, you’re in luck. You’re in so much luck. Like Goodfellas, My Blue Heaven is loosely based on the story of Henry Hill, the mobster who went into the witness protection program. Goodfellas ends with a vision of Hill standing in front of an dull suburb...

True facts about Joe Pantoliano: He fought and defeated the last living dragon of the moorlands, but showed mercy at the last minute and spared its life. They’re now good friends and have a time share in Palmdale. He once jumped back in horror and screamed “It’s the ‘haint of Loch Gullmar!” at a passing vehicle. He had hair in the ‘80s, as evidenced in 1988’s Midnight Run. He was cursed with invis...

everybody cut, everybody cut. What if normal, but dancing? What if dancing, but really bad dancing? What if James Dean, but Kevin Bacon? What if Natalie Wood, but Lori Singer? What if Sal Mineo, but Chris Penn? What if John Lithgow? What if Foot… but Loose ? Listen below, or find us where podcasts jump and twirl. DAC Episode 381 - Footloose (1984) Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan Download

one dead lion, one live dog. There used to be a sports league The A-A-G-B-P-G-L They used to play some baseball They’d get out there and give them hell Okay, I’m too hungry to come up with more lyrics. Adam and Aidan put on their baseball pants and talk about the baseball that isn’t Bull Durham. Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own is a lightly-to-highly fictionalized story about the All-America...

now there’s a live dog (whoops, it’s a dead lion) Filmmaker and YouTuber Patrick Willems once attempted to define what he called a “ vibes movie ”. A vibes movie, more or less, is a film that prioritizes atmosphere and filmmaking elements over a coherent plot. Willems lands on Tenet as the ultimate vibes movie, but if Tenet did not exist (And who’s to say? Maybe it doesn’t!), Legend would surely l...