FEAR AND LOATHING IN CINEMA

On Episode #142 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we pack our khakis and emotional baggage for a journey deep into the heart of Africa, by way of Hollywood’s wildest pet detective. Yes, we’re talking about Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, the sequel that taught us all the difference between bat guano and comedic genius. The post Episode #142 – Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995) first appeared on B...

On Episode #141 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, there are, depending on how many voices you hear in your head, two, possibly three people who dared to confront The Number 23, Joel Schumacher’s 2007 cinematic thriller of numerology, noir, and naked Jim Carrey angst. Yes, that Joel Schumacher. You know, the maestro behind The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and the Batman movie that introduced us to the conc...

On Episode #140 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, three brave souls click their ruby slippers and tumble, not into the glossy green hell of the Wicked franchise, but straight into the cracked, nightmarish cobblestones of 1985’s Return to Oz. Forget show tunes and moral lessons. This Oz comes courtesy of Walter Murch, the editing-and-sound-design sorcerer behind The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, who...

On Episode #139 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, four brave digital explorers, Bryan, Dan, Preston, and Chelsea, once again jack into the pixelated abyss to revisit Tron: Legacy, Disney’s 2010 attempt to convince us that glowing spandex and motorcycles could carry emotional weight. It’s an apt time for such a quest, what with Tron: Ares now zipping into theaters, promising that Jared Leto, of all p...

On Episode #138 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, five people who still refuse to let their phones listen to them take a deep dive into one of Hollywood’s most prescient nightmares about technology,  S1M0NE, or Simone for those of us who haven’t updated our operating systems since 2002. The post Episode #138 – S1MONE (2002) first appeared on Boomstick Comics .

On Episode #137 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four cinematic sperms finally find their egg, and what an egg it is. The year is 1994. America is wearing denim on denim without irony. The internet is a rumor. And somewhere in Hollywood, Ivan Reitman, the comedic alchemist behind Ghostbusters and Twins, asks a question no one dared to voice aloud. What if Arnold Schwarzenegger got pregnant? Ent...

On Episode #136 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four of us Green boys decided to lace up our metaphorical combat boots and enlist, not in the Marines, but in the 1995 Damon Wayans comedy Major Payne. For some of us, this film has long been chiselled into the granite face of the Comedy Mount Rushmore, somewhere between Airplane! and Blazing Saddles. For others, namely Chelsea, the podcast’s res...

On Episode #135 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, four cinephiles who, for the episode, style themselves as podcasting pornographers. They slip into something more comfortable this week with Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008). It was Smith’s answer to the Judd Apatovian moment, when Seth Rogen was America’s schlubby leading man and every joke was equal parts weed, sex, and sentimentalit...

On episode #134 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four superhero sidekicks that is Bryan, Dan, Chelsea, and Preston, voluntarily subject themselves to Superman III (1983), the cinematic equivalent of doing whippets in a RadioShack parking lot. This is the movie where Christopher Reeve, once again donning the cape, finds himself paired with Richard Pryor. Arguably the funniest stand-up comedian o...

On episode #133 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the squad piles into the back of a cop car with Martin Lawrence and Luke Wilson to revisit Blue Streak (1999), a film that now feels like both a time capsule and a comedic piece of nostalgia. Remember when buddy action comedies reliably paired the world’s stiffest white guy with the loudest, most cartoonish Black guy, and then had them bicker their w...

By the 132nd episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, one begins to wonder if Bryan, Dan, Chelsea, and their revolving door of guests aren’t actually podcasters at all, but cultural archaeologists, digging through the cinematic rubble of the ’90s with the patience of Indiana Jones and the appetite of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This week, their excavation tool of choice is Operation Dumbo Drop, D...

On the 131st episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, a podcast that has spent more time in the ‘90s than the Clinton administration. Bryan, Dan, and Preston revisit a movie that asks the big, important questions: Can an Austrian killing machine convincingly teach preschool? Is it okay to introduce children to heroin dealers before phonics? And why, exactly, was Kindergarten Cop shown at every elem...

On the gloriously unhinged 130th episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, Bryan, Chelsea, Wade, and, making a cameo so brief it rivals Dave Matthews in Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Preston, plunge headfirst into Adam Sandler’s 2008 absurdist comedy of a movie. You remember Zohan, don’t you? The one that critics in 2008 treated as though it had personally wronged them, like a bagel shop that ran out o...

Some people move to Texas for the brisket. Others come for the low taxes, wide skies, or a spiritual reawakening via H-E-B. But for Chelsea Nicole; fearless co-host, cinephile, and recent expatriate from the state that resembles a giant penis (Florida); it was the promise of freedom. And by freedom, I mean the chance to resurrect a 2001 cult classic starring Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, and Rachael...

There are few films that could convince four grown men in 2025 to willingly dodge the U.S. military draft, board a non-refundable flight to Hong Kong, and enter an underground full-contact martial arts tournament with zero formal training; ave, perhaps, for some light cardio and a YouTube rabbit hole of aikido fails. But in Episode #128 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, Bryan, Dan, Preston, and spec...

On Episode #127 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, a podcast that functions as both group therapy and cinematic exorcism, our scaly trio of hosts turned their collective, dragon-singed gaze toward Reign of Fire; the 2002 post-apocalyptic lizard-thon that imagined a world where dragons reemerged from the London Underground and decided that humanity had simply had enough time. This month’s theme? Man M...

On Episode #126 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, our beloved panel of armchair cine-soldiers (who may or may not be honorary members of the IRA; the Irish Rewatching Association) don their greenest beer goggles and deep-dive into one of the more politically confused action-thrillers of the Clinton years. Somewhere between All the President’s Men and The Pelican Brief, Alan J. Pakula must have asked...

On Episode #125 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we cracked a dozen metaphorical eggs and finally found the perfect duck. Not a perfect duck, the perfect duck: 1986’s Howard the Duck, a film so strange, so inexplicable, so duck-breasted, that it could only have emerged from the mind of George Lucas during what historians now refer to as the "Post-Ewok Malaise." The lineup this week: myself (Bryan,...

On Episode #124 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we revved our engines for a fast-paced thrill ride and instead crashed gently into a velvet-lined existential romance with Bobby Deerfield, Sydney Pollack’s 1977 film that stars a post-Godfather, pre-Scarface Al Pacino; looking like a haunted Calvin Klein ad and speaking at a volume normally reserved for guided meditation tapes. The post Episode #124...

On Episode #123 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, our brave quartet; Bryan, Dan, Chelsea, and Preston; take a break from dodging dinosaurs and emotionally recovering from Fallen Kingdom to pull a rabbit out of their collective cinematic hat. Their target this week? Louis Leterrier’s 2013 Vegas-and-vodka-infused magic-heist thriller Now You See Me; a film that asks, “What if Ocean’s Eleven took a sta...

On Episode #122 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, your three brave, emotionally bruised hosts; Bryan, Dan, and Preston; return to the scorched ruins of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the fifth installment in the dino-saga that now feels less like Spielberg’s evolutionary miracle and more like a deeply confused fever dream penned during a sugar rush in a Lego aisle. Originally released in 2018 to a...

On Episode No. 121 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, America’s favorite caffeine-fueled cinephiles do what any responsible adults would: they metaphorically strap themselves to the hood of a psychedelic Hot Wheels car and rocket straight into the candy-colored chaos of 2008’s Speed Racer. It’s the episode longtime listeners have waited for and longtime haters will pretend not to enjoy. While co-host...

On Episode No. 120 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, your favorite trio of podcast botanists; Bryan, Preston, and the valiantly returning Chelsea; strap themselves to a metaphorical tree and brace for the rustling leaves of The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan’s 2008 eco-thriller-slash-botanical-farce that once again raised the eternal cinematic question: What if the wind is trying to kill us? Yes, The...

On Episode No. 119 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the podcast’s resident cinephilic trio; Bryan, Dan, and Preston; unearth a forgotten curio from the tail end of the 1970s: The Magic of Lassie, a film whose very existence registers as a kind of cinematic non sequitur. Most Americans, even the least dog-inclined among us, can conjure the image of Lassie, the noble and ever-loyal Rough Collie, boun...

In Episode No. 118 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, our intrepid trio of cinephile hosts; ever curious, perpetually skeptical; trade the hum of the urban sprawl for the howls and snarls of a cinematic jungle. Their quarry? Kraven the Hunter, Sony’s latest foray into the increasingly chaotic patchwork that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, albeit a cul-de-sac version where Spider-Man is conspicuousl...