Grumpy Nostalgia: Second Look Cinema

Send us Fan Mail Season Six begins with possibly our least favorite selection in the history of the podcast. We were taught if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. We managed 53 minutes though. Not bad.

Send us Fan Mail Gabe (Stallone) manages to keep the vaguely European terrorists flummoxed but only when he's not making the googly eyes to annoyingly cute 90s girl Janine Turner.  Lots of catch phrases, toxic masculinity and enough quality deaths to keep even the most cynical viewer in a state of guilty pleasure.  Uber dorky head villain John Lithgow steals the show as far as your hosts are...

Send us Fan Mail The gang celebrates their Season 5 finale with a real pisser, Escape From New York from 1981.  Riddled with violence, gratuitous nudity, smoking, and Ernest Borgnine, this beauty is a true product of its time.  The boys can hardly contain their joy as each wonderfully dirty scene is flushed out with pure guilty pleasure confidence.  Inspired the ridiculously cast Donald Pleasence...

Send us Fan Mail New content? A Christmas miracle.  The gang go down memory lane this time to relive Christmas in the 70s.  A time when we put lead tinsel on our tree and added enough hot lights to a dead, dry trees that Prometheus himself was worried.  From barfing at your elementary school Christmas program to debunking the entire Kris Kringle conspiracy, we're covering it all.  Oh and Lite...

Send us Fan Mail OH MY GOD! We know him. We know him.  Our Christmas memories episodes come to a welcome close with the arrival every everybody's favorite holiday movie except for Christmas Vacation and a Christmas Story.  We haven't done those yet so they don't count.  Merry Christmas you filthy animals

Send us Fan Mail Is it or isn't it? Who cares, we say. The boys go back to 1988 to ponder when a man could be the lead in an action movie.  And that man could smoke, swear, kill people, and still be the hero.  This one also features one of our greatest performances ever, Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber.  All other movie villains have paled in comparison since.  The gang attempts to tackle the iss...

Send us Fan Mail Ho ho ho grumpy nation.  We start our xmas adventure with this 1983 tale of excess, betrayal, gorillas, and Jamie Lee's silk blouses.  You know, standard holiday fare. WARNING: This episode is different than others.  

Send us Fan Mail We're going mega-nerd this week reviewing the 1982 dark fantasy film, The Dark Crystal. So nerdy, in fact, that show co-host Mike had to recuse himself.  Actually, Mike is out this week and he asked show superfan, Dr. K @pinotjones to sit in for this odd but beautiful mess of a movie.  K had some big (smelly) shoes to fill, but he knocked it out of the park.  #thedarkcrystal...

Send us Fan Mail It's turkey time again, only our turkeys are the cinematic kind.  We needed some time for reflection this week, so we humbly ask you to revisit this special episode where we chow down on our most reviled holiday turkeys.  We only give thanks in that we don't have to watch these movies ever again.  This episode originally aired a few years ago and the movies we cover in i...

Send us Fan Mail We dangerously test the patience of our audience by reviewing yet another Arnold movie.  This week it's 87's The Running Man, just in time for its unasked for remake in theaters. Arnold was bigger than most movies during this time and it appears that no one ever bothered to tell him that he could actually say "no" in some instances. That said, this is a gloriou...

Send us Fan Mail With the release of Predator: Badlands this week, the gang remembered we talked about this franchise several years ago, but that episode stood out because we first met our heroine, Alaskan warrior princess Molly!  She bravely sat in for this episode and we have been awestruck ever since.  The movie was terrible, but this was a special podcast episode for many reasons.  Please give...

Send us Fan Mail Our 2025 Halloween series comes to a merciful close as we cover the amazing An American Werewolf in London from 1981.  Much like a unicorn, its a crazy original horror movie from a time where imagination, creativity, and talent could beat up a CGI movie any day of the week.  We keep the grumpy going to the end where we name our worst horror movie of the 21st century displaying our...

Send us Fan Mail The only thing more scary than Halloween is a bunch of unsupervised kids in 1978, high on sugar, wreaking havoc on suburbia.  This time the boys wax nostalgic on the Halloween experience in the 70s and 80s.  From horrible Woolworth's boxed costumes to those miserable clods that handed out pennies instead of candy to trick or treaters, we're covering it all.  If you ever...

Send us Fan Mail Time to kick off our season series Where Wolf? There! Wolf! with the obnoxiously entertaining Silver Bullet from 1985.  A little known Stephen King movie featuring Cory Haim and Gary Busey! And as if that wasnt horrible enough for you, the boys look back at the plethora of Stephen King movie adaptations from the very best to Lawnmower Man.  True horror, indeed.

Send us Fan Mail Cross over children. All are welcome. We're going back a bit to feature the first ever episode determined by a viewer's poll, the 1982 scare fest Poltergeist. Creepy clowns, little kids with horrible bangs, and a tree that eats little boys.  Spielberg made ET the same time he was shooting this so we suppose there was some repressed anger issues so he took it out on this...

Send us Fan Mail Good news! Hollywood is no longer remaking our great 90s movies. They've moved on to the crappy ones. This week we break format and talk about a new soon-to-be movie and unfortunately its this one. Your hosts unleash their inner grumpy with extreme prejudice as this 2:42 minute trailer truly make them lose it.  An affront to everything they hold dear with cinema.  Derivative,...

Send us Fan Mail With the pending arrival of Tron: Ares to theaters this fall, the boys decided to dust off this episode covering the original to remind you there's nothing to get excited about.  The groundbreaking (for the time) special effects are a little dated, but fortunately the story and acting are so terrible you wont notice. All that said, there's an odd charm to this one that w...

Send us Fan Mail Some say that the Grumpy Nostalgia boys have the same chemistry as Keanu and Swayze in this film.  Those people are wrong.  A few of you listened to this episode the first time, but not enough for our liking, so we're re-releasing this gem in hopes that its true beauty can be more appreciated.  A truly great action film that ushered in a multitude of comparable movies in the...

Send us Fan Mail Years of listener requests will finally be honored as the boys take on the uber-80s cult classic, Better Off Dead.  And they're not even charging two dollars for it. Travel back to a time where teen suicide was hilarious and film makers could be fearless and unapologetic in order to be funny.  Remember funny? A personal favorite for both of your hosts, this episode was a trea...

Send us Fan Mail It's back to school time so the boys decide to reminisce about the good old golden rule days.  School in the 70s was more of a Gulag experience rather than higher learning, but there were some good times too. Smoking teachers, bus ride hellscapes, and enough chocolate milk to strike fear into the hearts of a lactose intolerant generation to follow.  A must-listen to anyone wh...

Send us Fan Mail Killer worms with a side of Bacon. In the 90s, this was more than enough for us.  This week we're going the full six degrees of something-or-other trying to interpret this ridiculous 1990 B-movie.  Kevin Bacon's hair stars as Val, the garbage man turned worm basher.  Along for the ride is Fred Ward's Earl, who repeatedly ask us to pardon his French. And we do willin...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone loves Keanu, but none of you listened to us talk about him in this episode the first time, so we're trotting it out again.  Maybe it was because we were only 10 episodes into our podcast career or, more likely, our enormous lack of talent that kept you all away. Either way; Who cares?  In this glorious 90s action flick we are constantly reminded of how cool things us...

Send us Fan Mail We're going back to the stone age this week, which is appropriate in that the viewing experience feels like you're passing one.  Justin and Mike give their timid responses to the Flintstones in this brutal episode that test the very boundaries of their podcasting fortitude. John Goodman and cast do their best, but a script that took 35 (!) writers 87 minutes to tell wins...

Send us Fan Mail You want dinosaurs?  We got your dinosaurs right here.  Before there was Scarlett Johannsen in a 6th sequel to a movie, there was Goldblum.  And we were stuck with him.  While we'd personally watch Scarlett read the phone book for 2 hrs, in 1997 this dino epic was all the rage.  Speaking of rage, co-host Mike loses his cool at the very concept of this movie right away and tha...

Send us Fan Mail We don't go to 11 here, but we come close.  This week were looking back at the glorious mockumentary Spinal Tap from 1984.  One of the greatest rock movies ever made was never really appreciated in its time (just like us). We all reveled in the pure, unadulterated hedonism of metal in the 80s and barely lived to tell the tale.  That's why our music was so good, it could...