Drat Pack

At long last, our horrible secret comes out- it turns out we thought some of the movies we suggested for this podcast were actually good and just used this whole thing as an excuse to force a discussion about a "bad" movie we secretly liked. We air our dirty laundry to each other and confess our deepest truths about movies like The Girl from Monday and Tomorrowland and Bram Stoker's Dracula. As pa...

Shakespeare gets a modern makeover complete with low-slung cargo shorts and asymmetrically-cut tops in this teen take on Twelfth Night, 2006's She's the Man. In a category brimming with Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Easy A, is there room for yet another similarly updated YA comedy? The answer, of course, is not really, especially if ends up being as dull and dated as this one. Leigh, B...

At long last, our horrible secret comes out- it turns out we thought some of the movies we suggested for this podcast were actually good and just used this whole thing as an excuse to force a discussion about a "bad" movie we secretly liked. We air our dirty laundry to each other and confess our deepest truths about movies like The Girl from Monday and Tomorrowland and Bram Stoker's Dracula. As pa...

Our Sweet and Sour Summer of YA Angst marches on like a june bug in a Southern pride parade with 2013’s Beautiful Creatures, a country-fried slice of supernatural teen drama stuffed with a bunch of heavy-hitting actors in turn stuffed with all the scenery they devoured. What might otherwise be a pretty rote YA adaptation becomes considerably more interesting by making the brave choices to swap the...

As part of our process of determining movies for our Sweet and Sour Summer of YA Angst, we went through several lists of movies based on young adult novels that never quite took off or flopped miserably. Naturally, we ended up watching multiple potential candidates and came across several movies that we found fascinating in some way but didn't merit a full discussion. Maybe they were actually good...

Nothing says "fun and fizzy tween comedy" like one where a baby Jennifer Garner wishes to be "30, flirty, and thriving" and has her consciousness propelled forward into a multiverse governed by a monkey's paw where she has achieved all her dreams but has destroyed all that is sweet and pure about herself in the process. That's right, our retroactively-themed Sweet and Sour Summer of Teen Angst kic...

Summer is finally here, and with it the exciting promise of traveling to new locales (or just sitting in front of the air conditioner on your phone watching movies, both are good options)! Using that as a starting point, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris decided to talk about the fictional worlds of films that they'd most like to live in and why. Will Leigh deign to visit Brendan when he moves to Coruscan...

Journey with us back to the distant year of 2010, a time when Walt Disney Pictures was wildly desperate to launch another multi-million dollar franchise that would convince teenage boys to give them money. Enter The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an ostensible live-action adaptation of a Fantasia segment that would reteam National Treasure director Jon Turteltaub with National Treasure scenery gnawer Nico...

For this mini episode of Why Watch, we tackle one of the cultural zeitgeist's most pressing issues- who are your sweetest bois? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss their favorite gentle boys of pop culture, those sweet boys who are defined by their willingness to show kindness and help others rather than immediately punch the shit out of someone (look, some of them also do that too but...

Our reigning queen of The-Consistently-Great-Thing-in-the-Bad-Movies-We-Watch, Michelle Pfeiffer, once again drifts into the focus of our podcast as the lead of a romcom (!) co-starring Paul Rudd (!!) and directed by Amy Heckerling (!!!) that was buried in the direct-to-DVD pipeline (!V). That's right, on this episode we'll be discussing the 2007 scattershot May-August romantic comedy I Could Neve...

Look at that, a true "mini-episode in name only," clocking in at our normal episode length! With the third movie in the Fantastic Beasts series having just been released to theaters to a resounding "Meh," Leigh, Brendan, and Chris took this opportunity to look back at perhaps the most fascinatingly bungled cursed franchise of our time (no, not Universal's Dark Universe). We begin with Chris trying...

Sorry in advance about the dodgy audio quality, you can blame it on us trying to record from the penthouse of a hotel in Lake Tahoe if that helps make it thematically appropriate. And it should, because for this episode we're tackling Joe Carnahan's 2006 gangster / assassin free-for-all Smokin' Aces, starring Ryan Reynolds, Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Chris Pine, Ben Affleck, Alicia Keys, and a whol...

We return with the third leg of our "guess what's real and what's made up" game, this time focusing on that finest of all American art forms, musical theater! Well, some would certainly argue that, at least. Join Brendan as he quizzes Leigh and Chris with a list of musical titles as they determine which ones are actually professionally-mounted musicals and which ones are titles that Brendan though...

Mentally transport yourself back to the distant, far-flung year of 2010. Somehow Star Wars hadn't returned, we were all still trying to figure out what would come of all these Marvel movies, and Disney was trying to figure out how to make blockbusters that teenagers would see. Enter Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, a desaturated tri-dimensional sequel to a movie that doesn't exist. Audiences desp...

MORE GAMES! The people (by which we mean we) demanded it, and so we delivered. We go now to round two of our guessing game in which Leigh and Brendan try to determine what woman-featured thriller movies Chris has made … Continue reading →

Another Valentine's Day is upon us, and like a shiftless sitcom husband stopping at a gas station for a last minute card, we also turn our thoughts to a lazy half-assed attempt at showing romance. This year's Valentine's Day romcom is 2003's Alex & Emma, one of Rob Reiner's many many middling unsuccessful movies following his dizzying highs in the 80s and early 90s. This shameless rip-off of P...

Have you ever encountered something so directly suited to your desires, something so attuned to your tastes, something that you can't possibly imagine anyone else responding to as passionately as you? If so, you've got some ego, buddy! But still, we're going to discuss this sort of thing anyway. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we talk about some specific forms of media that feels tailor-made to...

A new year, a new start! And what better way to celebrate the endless possibilities of a new year than to watch a movie that does very little new with a story that's been around for many centuries? That's right, we're finally doing the weird companions movie to Guy Ritchie's King Arthur and His Lads of the Round Table, 2018's Robin Hood starring Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, and sever...

Our beloved (?) annual tradition continues! It is the end of the year and we are all very tired, so for the fifth time we look at the year in review. The movies! The drinks! The movies and drinks yet to come! Also we're doing that Taron Egerton Robin Hood movie next, so maybe consider renting that piece of crap. Continue reading →

What better way to celebrate Christmas than to imagine yourself in a world of dazzling whiteness, inscrutable timelines, and overall excess? That's right, 'tis the season to enjoy a messy Christmas movie, and this year's reason for the season is Nancy Meyer's 2006 vaguely Christmas-y romcom The Holiday. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we all swap houses, cars, everything, and discuss the two due...

In which we play a new game for the holidays, much like a gang of jolly penniless friends as a Victorian England Christmas party (except it's about Hallmark movies which would have undoubtedly perplexed and befuddled the average citizen of that time period). There's nouns and adjectives and drawing paper from hats and improvising the plots of Hallmark Christmas movies, and truly what more could yo...

Finally, we answer the question that has plagued humanity for like 15 years or so- who watches Watching the Detectives? Also, what is Watching the Detectives and is there a good reason no one has heard of it despite the … Continue reading →

With Halloween in our rearview mirrors and the evil demonic spirits we brought to our mortal realm after spending the night in that haunted house safely turned to statues when the first rays of dawn touched them, we can focus on the future: movies that we thought would suck but then didn't! Now that we have created a Horrible New Normal and studios are starting to put bloated expensive crap back i...

For our annual Halloween Spooktacular episode, we dredge the the cruddy marshes of early-2000s horror films and pull up 2005's White Noise, a real piece of crap you might be dimly aware of because Michael Keaton was in it. Keaton stars as a widower who believes he can hear his dead wife speaking to him through the static of his phone, prompting him to phone in his performance for the next 70 minut...

In our latest minisode game premise, Leigh combs through the dregs of forgotten early cinema for movie names that seem just implausible enough and combines them with a list of her own fictional titles, then forces Brendan and Chris to wrack their brains in an attempt to determine which ones are real and which ones are fake. Games are fun and they don't require all of us to do preparation for an ep...