General Snobbery | Film and Philosophy

Greetings, Listener. Today on General Snobbery, we discuss the biggest hot-button issue of the current age: the Jurassic Park Super Bowl commercial. At the time of posting, the commercial is about four months old, but given the fact the commercial has crossed half a million views on YouTube, it’s become clear the impact is not receding. Well, your tireless wait for your Internet’s preeminent Juras...

Hey Listener, we’re back! And we’re here to snob about a movie that nobody saw, Jurassic World: Rebirth . This is a very bad movie. There are dinosaurs, there are deaths, and there are many characters that you forget about the second you meet them. This is a movie that should not exist. And yet, it does, therefore we snobbed about it. Does it have anything to do with the previous movies? Basically...

Hey listener. We’ve come back for our yearly podcast. This time, we’re looking at another summer blockbuster: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , also known as Indiana Jones 5 , also known as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s Child. This movie is unique among summer blockbusters, in that it was projected to make a lot of money, and it didn’t do that. This film has been out for several we...

One June 10th, 2022, Jurassic World: Dominion was released. For a few days, people were talking about it, mostly regarding how bad it is. By the time this podcast episode was recorded a month later, nobody cared. It’s quite possible nobody ever cared about this movie, but the marketing was so aggressive that there was a brief moment that people believed they kind of cared. Still, lots of people sa...

Abandon hope, all ye who enter Isla Nublar.

The movie is Predator. The setting is the jungle somewhere. The characters are a lot of beefy men, and one sneaky alien who starts pickin’ em off one by one. There’s some flexin. There’s some dyin. There’s even a bareknuckle brawl starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. This movie is a rompin’ stompin’ ride, and without movies of this kind, General Snobbery podcast wouldn’t exist. And we all know a lot of...

Here’s a celebration of movie dads, and anything else we thought about in association. Enjoy, listener!

The Legend of Bagger Vance is a movie that not many people saw, and that very few people still talk about. But we’re still talking about it, damnit! Why? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out, Listener. That’s the only way you’ll learn what this R. Redford/W. Smith film has to do with suburban dads who live lives of suppressed anger that manifests as psychotic rage. Enjoy!

Twister is a movie about tornados, Bill Paxton, and the 90s. Enjoy!

Hey Listener! Remember Lake Placid? It’s a movie that has Bill Pullman, Oliver Platt, and Betty White as a foul-mouthed woman who fed her husband to a giant crocodile. It’s a hoot! No, this snob is not about the sequel, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda. It’s just about the boring ole original. But hey! We also talk about other movies like Jurassic Park, The Shining, Stand by Me, Silence of the Lambs, and...

Hey Listener. This episode is about Mel Gibson’s Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. Did we mention Mel Gibson made this film? In case you didn’t know that, you will after this episode. Except for the parts where we don’t talk about Apocalypto at all and instead talk a lot about life coaches. But maybe those also have something to do with Mel Gibson. Who the fuck knows.

Hey Listener. Did you hear that there’s a pandemic afoot? Did you know that M. Night Shyamalan predicted it in 2008 with his prophetic film, The Happening? Don’t let Mark Wahlberg’s atrocious acting fool you — this movie has a message. And it’s a message that we can always laugh during times of strife, even when random kids that enter halfway through the movie are getting shot on a random person’s...

Hey Listener. In this episode, Matt and Sean snob about James Cameron’s Avatar, a movie that people cared about a lot for a while, and barely talk about anymore. Why are we talking about Avatar when a global pandemic is destroying the fabric of civilization? Well, why does James Cameron fancy himself an explorer of the sea? Some questions just don’t have answers. For those questions, we turn to th...

In the 73rd episode of the remarkably consistent podcast General Snobbery, your favorite film deconstructionists turn their Derridean eye toward the 1980 film Altered States starring William "John" Hurt. Haven't heard of it? Well you should have! And now you will!

What do two shows on the History Channel have to do with Scott Stapp? Probably not that much, but at least something, because all of them are discussed on this new episode of General Snobbery, where we examine the strange intersection between masculinity and conspiracy that seems to exist in these craaaazy times. Forged in Fire and Ancient Aliens are pretty wild shows, so this episode is a pretty...

Ready Player One is directed by Spielberg, Steven, who has had Asian stereotypes decorate his films all the way since IJ and the T of D (not including the vaguely Asian characteristics of the shark from Jaws). Ready Player One is about a kid named Wade Watts, whose alter ego is Parzival — regardless of which persona he inhabits, he’s a really bad actor. He has one face, and it’s a very ugly face....

No dialogue, none.  Just Arnold screams.  Wow, this is going to be a good movie.  And then, Arnold eyes bulging out of a prosthetic Arnold face.  Okay, I get it.  This is going to be one of the best movies ever made. Hello listener, let's take an  Interstellar  trip. Doug Quaid (not to be confused with Dennis) is just an average, blue collar Austrian-American liv...

Those wily Coen are at it again! From the fellas who brought you The Big Lebowski , Fargo, and A Serious Man comes The Ballad of Buster Scruggs , a six-in-one special that follows wild characters through the Wild West as only the Coens can conceive it. Six short films connected thematically comprise this film, which better win some Oscars, because it’s fucking good. You might consider it the Coen...

This episode is mostly about the movie Airplane! Airplane! is a funny movie. It’s filled with silly jokes, rich parody, and Lloyd Bridges, who is addicted to sniffing glue. We revisit this classic comedy and finds points of richness. Along the way, we discuss the difference between satire and parody, our current PC culture, and Darth Maul. Maul gets the most airtime, apart from the film de jour, a...

What the hay is Burning Man, eh? Well, we can tell you one thing: it’s certainly not Coachella! In this snob, Matt and Sean break form, talking not about a movie but about a “festival” — that is, this thing called Burning Man. What is it? Is it legit? 2 legit? 2 legit 2 quit? No one would ever say something like that there. It’s pretty darn cool, it turns out, and this episode gets into why. Sean...

There's no way around it, Listener.  The Goonies is all about sex.  In particular, it is a coming of age story about what it means to be an American boy discovering sexuality for the first time.  Can the Goonies, by traveling deep into a cave, discover the treasure they looking for?  The treasure of ONE EYED WILLY?  Or, will they be thwarted by those mother-loving Italians...

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, also known as Jurassic World 2, or Jurassic Park 5, is a new movie that has made over a billion dollars. This movie stars Chris Prat, James Cromwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, and a raptor named Blue. Pratt returns with his signature clicker to usher the way for these benevolent dinos to rule the world again. That T-Rex that was such a bad boiii in J. Park Uno is now pre...

The Prestige is a movie directed by Christopher "Chris" Nolan, co-written with his baby bro Jonathan. But as "Chris" is a master of the subliminal, it becomes quite clear that The Prestige is Nolan's revelation to the world that he and Jonathan are actually the same person -- or, as Michael Caine would say, Jonathan is his "dubbow". This movie is confusing. In fact, at some level, we are almost ce...

Cube. Lopez. Wilson. That Victorian Hunter from Jumanji . These are the people you will meet in the Amazon, searching for the fabled People of the Mist. But what else will you meet on this Voightage? CGI! Anaconda is Roger Ebert’s favorite movie, and it’s basically Jaws . People on a rickety boat attacked by a monster water creature? Yep, that’s Jaws . That is one Voightage I have no interest in t...

Blue Velvet  is a disturbing movie. The main reason it is disturbing is because of a man named Hopper. Dennis Hopper to be exact. Dennis Hopper plays Frank, a crazy man who inhales nitrous oxide from a ventilator he seems to always have. In reality, Dennis Hopper is playing Dennis Hopper, because when D.H. saw the script, he told filmmaker David Lynch, "I must play Frank, because I am Frank."...