Diminishing Returns

Exactly what the world needed: three white men telling the world how to feel about feminism. That's right, Diminishing Returns turns its three heads to Wonder Woman! Gal Gadot and Chris Pine proving that DC movies don't have to be shit! Why Wonder Woman? Why now? Because Justice League is out soon. Justice League! It's probably going to be rubbish but maybe it won't be! Woohoo! Diminishing Returns...

We've covered the original Connery run of Bond movies. Now it's time to look at George Lazenby's short-lived turn in those spy shoes. Is Lazenby any good? Is "Bond" a codename? Is the world ready for a fat James Bond? All these questions and more are answered in this week's edition of Diminishing Returns! This episode also features The Big Bond Theme Quiz. Will Allen successfully identify the offi...

It's the 2nd Diminishing Returns Halloween special! And with special guest, director of The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchez! We've done this two years running, so it's now officially an annual tradition. Celebrate with us by listening as we discuss and review The Blair Witch Project, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 and 2016's Blair Witch (the third one with a similar name to the first one). No...

It's another Marvel episode. We've done Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy; this time, it's Thor and Thor: The Dark World. You know the drill.

It's still October, so it's still the run-up to Halloween so we're still indulging in celebrating horror franchises! Hot on the heels of last week's episode covering the 6-part Child's Play series, we're now taking a look at the even larger Saw franchise spanning seven Saw movies from Saw to Saw 3D, all in the run-up to the new film, kickstarting the franchise: Jigsaw.

In movie circles, October is basically just "horror month". We get our horror month off to a great start with this episode; a restrospective of the Child's Play (aka Chucky) series, spanning Child's Play, Child's Play 2, Child's Play 3, Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky, Curse of Chucky and a look at the upcoming Cult of Chucky. As always, as well as weighing in on the films, we pitch our own ideas...

It's a cult favourite but what lies beneath the hype? We break down the pros and cons of Ridley Scott's dystopian classic Blade Runner and take a look at the many different versions of the film.

In a bid to do something special for the 69th edition of Diminishing Returns, we bring you an episode covering The Godfather, often regarded as the greatest film ever made. We also cover The Godfather: Part II, also often regarded as the greatest film ever made. Oh, and The Godfather: Part III, extremely rarely regarded as the greatest film ever made. This may go down as the most controversial epi...

This ought to tide the Bond fans over for a little while: an episode covering 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service and looking forward to Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Given Calvin's tastes, it's safe to assume that James Bond comes up a lot in this episode, alongside Colin Firth, Matthew Vaughn, Samuel L. Jackson and a whole heap of other things.

But we haven't done The LEGO Movie yet! It's fine. It's fine. We're doing LEGO Batman first. It's more fun. Yes, this week, we're looking at, reviewing and pitching sequels to The LEGO Batman Movie, tying into the upcoming release of the upcoming The LEGO Ninjago Movie. Oh, and there's a listener competition at some point - so have a listen and keep your eyes peeled on our social media accounts an...

In anticipation of the new film adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 novel, It, we take a look at the book, a look at the 1990 mini-series (or TV movie, depending on who you ask) and, of course, the upcoming film that will be swapping Tim Curry for Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, "the dancing clown". This episode is absolutely full of Tim Curry and full of clowns.

Diminishing Returns takes a break from the summer blockbusters to go back two decades and dig out the old VHS tapes of Beavis and Butt-Head. The leap from small to large screen has rarely been handled with greater skill but the young reprobates may not be to everyone's taste.

With Netflix's upcoming American adaptation of the Death Note manga, we take a look at the four Japanese movies and the TV series before, as always, pitching our own ideas for Death Note sequels.

We already did Jaws, Ted! It's a different film! It's a very different film! It's a different shark! This week, we explore Blake Lively vehicle, The Shallows, directed by Juame Collett-Serra, then pitch our own sequels with ideas ranging from a Speed knock-off to something involving Gary Lineker going on a crisp safari... well, sort of.

This week, things get frantic as we look at the high-octane, Jason Statham action-movies, Crank and Crank: High Voltage. For once, Calvin has his derogatory hat on, as he takes Allen and Sol to task for liking the films. Imagine our Transformers episode in reverse.

The long-awaited return to the James Bond franchise is finally here... and without wanting to sound as arrogant as Bond, himself, it might just be the best episode of the show to date. We give you some in-depth film chat, some particularly high-calibre pitches for sequels to You Only Live Twice, and, because it's a special occasion, a whopping 15 special guest stars! This week's sequel pitches inc...

We typically spend somewhere over 3 hours recording episodes of the show. As you can see, this is then edited down into something usually under 2 hours in length. We cut a lot of good stuff for the sake of time or purely because we're going off on too much of a tangent, so in this episode, please enjoy a whole load of all-new material that was cut from some of our classic episodes. This episode co...

We covered the original Planet of the Apes movies last week, so this week, we're doing the current Apes franchise (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes) starring Andy Serkis as Caesar. We also look at Tim Burton's remake because why not? As always, we cap things off by pitching our own ideas for what a new Planet of the Apes movie could...

War of the Planet of the Apes is out this week, capping off a trilogy of snazzy, modern apes movies, but before the franchise was a surprisingly intelligent and emotionally resonant, it was a load of films in the '60s and '70s about chimp-men with coconut-faces, running around, causing chaos for people like Charlton Heston. We dive into those original films (Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet...

Diminishing Returns returns to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which, with this week's release of Spider-Man: Homecoming, itself returns to the characters of Spider-Man and Iron Man, last seen in Captain America: Civil War. This episode takes an in-depth look at Sam Raimi's trilogy of films that helped shape the modern superhero genre (as well as, inevitably, touching on his Evil Dead movies) befor...

The Minions are quickly assimilating themselves into all areas of life; films, games, phone covers, shampoo, cereal... and now episodes of Diminishing Returns. With Despicable Me 3 out soon, we let the Minions take over the show for a week with a look at their spin-off movie and both Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2. As always, we pitch some Minion movies of our own.

In case the current heatwave didn't tip you off, you know you're deep into Summer when a new Transformers movie comes along. Transformers: The Last Knight is out this week, so we took a look at 1986's Transformers: The Movie, as well as Michael Bay's 2007 effort, Transformers, and its sequels (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction)....

Happy birthday, Diminishing Returns! 1 year old today (well, last week, actually, but we wanted to cover The Mummy). In order to prevent our end of year review episode being 5 hours long, we decided to celebrate our 1-year anniversary with a look back at the last 6 months of cinema (and some films we wanted to revisit from last time). This episode contains reviews of: - Miss Peregrine's Home for P...

Diminishing Returns heads back to the Universal Monsters franchise (now known as Dark Universe apparently) to explore the The Mummy movies (1932's The Mummy, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Curse, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, 1999's The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - as well as Hammer's 1959 remake)....

In a Diminishing Returns first, here's an episode about a film that we did an episode tying into (yes, we've been going so long that things are going to start getting meta). If you haven't already heard it, got and listen to our Review of the Year 2016 episode, in which Calvin and Allen butt heads over whether Suicide Squad is a solid action movie or complete and utter dross. Afterwards, come back...