Hey, Do You Remember...?

We've been getting requests for Stand By Me since this podcast launched and it's easy to see why. This is a film that seems tailor made for the premise of this show. One of the benefits to holding off on it for this long is that we've already covered so many of the other "kids on an adventure" movies from this era and now we can really highlight what sets this one apart. So grab your gear and foll...

1994 was a very good year for Jim Carrey. Ace Ventura, The Mask, and Dumb & Dumber were all released within the span of eleven months and established him as a comedic force to be reckoned with. Although it might be argued that the other two films have had more resonance, The Mask was the most critically and commercially successful at the time. Which is why it's pretty crazy to consider that it was...

It's time to bring this saga to a close. We conclude our retrospective of the original Star Wars trilogy by trying to decide how successfully Return of the Jedi sticks the landing. For some, this is still an above-average entry in the franchise. For others, it's the first sign of George Lucas' worst impulses as a storyteller and a harbinger for what was to follow. No matter which camp you fall int...

Happy Holidays, friends! This year the HDYR gang meets up with a few other misfits in Christmastown for a look back at the Rankin/Bass claymation classic, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. It's aired on CBS every single year since 1964, but there have been quite a few nips, tucks, additions, and subtractions in that time. We go over all of the different versions, some of the more problematic element...

On our Batman & Robin episode, we mentioned how part of the fallout of that film was that suddenly these adaptations were a little apprehensive about getting too comic book-y. To that end, movies like Blade and  X-Men wound up taking some pretty extreme liberties with their source material. They were dark... they were fairly humorless... and there was this sense that the people behind them were ma...

For a movie called Street Fighter , there aren't many streets and there's even less fighting. When it comes to liberties taken with the source material, however, that's only scratching the surface. After the meteoric success of the Street Fighter II video game, a live-action feature film was all but inevitable - but Capcom's guiding hand in the movie's development quickly became a clenched fist th...

The HDYR gang is off to the polls with a look back at Alexander Payne's subversive comedy Election . Nearly every step of the way, the film (and the novel it was based on) faced the same problem - the perception that it was a more run-of-the-mill teen comedy. The marketing department wasn't sure how to sell the movie and as a result, the film tanked at the box office. In the years since its releas...

Bonus Episode! Kristen & Mike from  The Sunnydale Stacks podcast join Chris for a conversation about the brand new Halloween . Which is not to be confused with Halloween (1978). Or Halloween (2007). And even though this is technically Halloween II , it has nothing to do with Halloween II (1981). Or Halloween II (2009). Join us as we traverse all the twists, turns, tricks, and treats of this choose...

Psycho is the film (and maybe the one scene) Alfred Hitchcock is most identified with, despite the fact that it's something of an anomaly on his filmography. Deliberately pulpy and shot on the cheap, it would go on to become the legendary director's biggest success - as well as a masterclass in misdirection. These days, it's tough to find anyone who isn't familiar with all of the big twists and ic...

We begin our run of Halloween episodes with a look back at Neil Jordan's adaptation of Anne Rice's bestselling novel Interview with the Vampire. The film was a big hit back in 1994, but efforts to capitalize on its success and turn The Vampire Chronicles into a franchise were somewhat in vain (get used to vampire puns btw). Which leaves this one, at least for the time being, as something of an ano...

No party poopers here, all three of us were big fans of Kindergarten Cop as kids. But a lot of parents? Not so much. All of the drugs, murder, and mayhem left many of them scratching their heads. Schwarzenegger felt the PG-13 rating hurt them at the box office, but director Ivan Reitman was adamant that the film didn't work without some of the more mature elements. Three decades later, we decided...

Considering all the obstacles that the cast and crew of Predator were up against during its production, the finished product could easily have been an unwatchable mess. Instead, it became a classic. There are some incredible behind-the-scenes stories, a handful of truly knockout action set pieces, a subversive undertone we might have missed as kids, and one of cinema's most memorable movie monster...

There was certainly no sophomore slump for Quentin Tarantino. After the success of his debut feature Reservoir Dogs , he returned two years later with one of the most influential films of the last three decades - Pulp Fiction . The transgressive tone, hip lingo, and non-linear structure basically created an entirely new sub-genre of crime thriller. And yet - there were many detractors who felt thi...

ayne's World that really established the template SNL movies would follow for the next decade. It's also unquestionably one of the more successful entries in that pantheon. Although if we're being honest, that's not a very high bar to clear. So how does all of this play two decades later? Especially now that the counter-culture appeal of this style of comedy has been slightly diluted by how often...

Say Anything is a pretty impressive directorial debut for Cameron Crowe. Not only does it establish all of the hallmarks we now associate with his films, it also does so with more confidence than you usually see with a lot of first-time directors. Crowe's not taking his awkward first steps as a filmmaker. He pretty much hit his stride right out of the gate. Which is not to say there aren't aspects...

None of us had seen this movie since it was released in 1994 and although its reputation certainly preceded it, I'm not sure we understood the extent of what we were signing up for here when we picked it. It's not going to come as a surprise to anyone that this wasn't a particularly good movie, but The Flintstones is a really interesting counterpoint to some of the other big screen adaptations we'...

Well everyone certainly cut loose on this one. If you grew up with Footloose , it might not be easy to recognize how objectively insane this movie is. But oh baby, this is one wild ride with arguably two of the craziest scenes we've ever discussed on this podcast. Topics include: the real life story that inspired the film, Reverend Moore's surprisingly layered characterization, why Chuck becomes t...

It's hard to believe that it's been fifteen years since Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was released. It's even hard to believe that a movie based on a theme park ride turned out to be this good. That was exactly the sort of cynicism facing the film when it became a sleeper hit in the summer of 2003. Initially dismissed as a misguided cash grab, Pirates went on to become a g...

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Equally revered and reviled, Face/Off is emblematic of the overblown but undercooked action films that were dominating theaters in the late 90s. Director John Woo was already a legend back in Hong Kong, but he never had as much luck with his American-made films. This is definitely the best of that bunch, but one of the running themes in this episode is why so much of his style gets lost in the tra...

There really isn't another film quite like Heathers . Sure, it gets referenced a lot when describing other teen movies, but the comparisons are largely superficial. There's an unmatched darkness swirling beneath the confectionery exterior of this that makes it hilarious and horrifying in equal measure. As we learned during our discussion, the first viewing can be a pretty jarring experience that t...

This one's been a long time coming and now the  HDYR gang is finally ready to take on those punks from Cobra Kai. It had been ages since any of us had seen  The Karate Kid and although we all expected to have a good time with it, we were pretty surprised by just how well-made this original film is. Topics include: how director John G. Avildsen shot a rehearsal of the entire movie with the principa...

You come from New York. You killed a good-ole- boy. There is no way this is not going to trial. And the only guy standing between you and the electric chair?  My Cousin Vinny . Extrapolated from a handful of experiences the screenwriter had in real life and fact-checked by a director who went to law school, this 1992 fish-out-of-water comedy provides a surprisingly accurate portrayal of a criminal...

We've watched some truly insane movies for this podcast, but we've never experienced anything like The Wizard . There isn't one single aspect of this that makes a lick of sense - not the characters, their relationships, the dialogue, or even the way it handles video games. But the lunacy of it all is so much fun that the movie becomes incredibly watchable. When this was released back in 1989, Nint...

If you had to guess which one of us watched a romantic comedy about figure skating over and over again as a kid, you probably wouldn't go with Chris. And yet... His little sister's love for this film meant that it was always on and so eventually, he started to love it too. Donna was also a huge fan when she first saw it, but explains why she never really went back to it after that initial viewing....