Grumpy Nostalgia: Second Look Cinema

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...

Send us Fan Mail This week we're looking back at those amazing stores, venues and restaurants that we thought would never go away but now somehow have simply turned into T-Mobile stores. While we suckle at the teet of Amazon now, some of remember going shopping, playing in arcades and eating at 6000 calorie steak buffets. If you ever played Frogger for an hour on one quarter, shot a 178 at th...

Send us Fan Mail Our summer retro series comes to a merciful close with the headliner from hell, FACE/OFF from 1997.  By now we're sure you're Nic Caged out but hang in there for one more last heave of a movie.  This is easily in our top 5 favorite episodes of all time.  Cage and Travolta battle in a never-ending struggle to see who can chew the most scenery in every frame of this John W...

Send us Fan Mail It's easy to say Con Air is a terrible movie.  So we do.  We say it a lot of times. Thankfully its so full of stereotypes, overused tropes, and bile it makes for a great podcast.  In this week's special re-issue episode you get to listen to the boys really struggle to comprehend how this movie got made (in a fun way).  The first podcast episode that required overtime in...

Send us Fan Mail The words "number 2" have never been more appropriate as we welcome the next movie of our special summer homage to Nic Cage with 1996's The Rock. Add in some Connery and his wigged, disproportionally-sized stuntman and we got ourselves a classic 90s action hit, y'all. For some reason Nic is named Stanley Goodspeed. And there's poisonous gas.  That's s...

Send us Fan Mail We kick off our special summer series dedicated to America's greatest living actor, Nic Cage, with 2000's Gone in 60 Seconds. This movie features 63 songs in 119 minutes which is important because it helps to drown out the dialogue.  Memphis Raines and the gang boost 50 cars in one night and the bad guy falls into a coffin and we haven't even got to the implausible...

Send us Fan Mail We had to go all the way back to the 70s to find a movie where Superman was actually cool and, man oh superman, does this one deliver.  Who needs crappy-looking CGI villains when you have the horrifying Ned Beatty and an ascot-wearing Gene Hackman.  Throw in some pre-meltdown Margot Kidder and the perennial whacked out Marlon Brando and this one writes itself.  We loved this one a...

Send us Fan Mail We can all agree that music is generally getting worse, but the technology used to bring it to us is better than ever. Only it isn't. In this episode, the gang looks back at the wonderful ways we got our music.  From scratchy AM/FM radios to glorious vinyl.  From bulky cassettes to green sharpie'd CDs.  Ultimately leading to the cold, soulless streaming services that mur...

Send us Fan Mail Machines come back from the future to change the course of history but completely ignore eradicating Ed Hardy, Post-Grunge rock, and TikTok.  Arnold's back for another go on the podcast and he has 14 lines. But he kills 39 people so we can understand his priorities.  Make sure to stick around for the end of this one where we get a chance to comment on a very pretentious &quot...

Send us Fan Mail If you ever wanted to see a Ghostbuster jump out of a plane with a cigar-smoking talking gorilla, this is the movie for you! This ridiculously dumb movie celebrates its 30th birthday this week and we felt compelled to pay homage. We were only a little over a year into our podcast journey when we decided to tackle this one and we were completely unprepared. And we have have the PTS...

Send us Fan Mail We're celebrating Father's Day by keeping up with the Jones boys. We got gondolas, Nazis, River Phoenix, sewer rats, and a wig-free Connery just for starters. A perfect ending for the Indiana Jones trilogy.  Luckily, Hollywood decided not to ruin the legacy by releasing additional cash-grab movies after this one.  Oh, wait. Stick around till the end for this one.  We pay...