In Reel Deep

Love Actually is considered a beloved holiday classic, but is it even a Christmas movie? And, more importantly, is it actually god awful? It's still Christmas Month and our special guest Sam Johnson is still with us to pick apart this 2003 romantic comedy, one that sparked a half-dozen other holiday-themed films with star-studded casts of their own. We talk about the joys of Bill Nighy and Emma Th...

Christmas Month continues on the In Reel Deep Podcast with Arthur Christmas , the unfortunately titled 2011 animated Christmas comedy that somehow made $147 million and was barely heard from again. Our Christmas movie expert loves Arthur Christmas with all his heart, though; we break down where it sits in the Christmas rankings, why it needed a signature song, and how this movie might help kids be...

On the heels of Horror Month, the In Reel Deep Podcast's buildup to Halloween, we're back with Christmas Month! This will be a look at all things Christmas movies; it starts with the introduction of our guest, Andrew's brother Sam Johnson. Sam is a Christmas fanatic, and he goes into excruciating detail on what makes a great Christmas movie, along with choosing the three movies we'll be watching t...

October is just about over, which means the end of Horror Month on the In Reel Deep Podcast. But before we go, we're talking about the 2014 supernatural horror film It Follows , one of the genre's most acclaimed recent gems. With a no-name cast and a brilliant conceit, it nods to decades of horror classics without winking at its audience; it also makes slowly plodding, murderous creatures scary ag...

"Mac wants the flamethrower!" Very rarely does a quote sum up a movie quite like that line and The Thing , John Carpenter's 1982 science-fiction/horror classic. You've got bearded Kurt Russell with beautiful flowing hair; you've got Keith David, Wilford Brimley, and a terrific cast of character actors; and you've got a gore-filled, paranoia-centric monster story that still holds up today. For our...

Horror Month continues on the In Reel Deep Podcast with Rosemary's Baby , the 1968 psychological horror classic from writer/director Roman Polanski. At almost 50 years old, it's horror from what feels like another world, before big scares and gore became a necessity. Mia Farrow's brilliant performance as pregnant housewife Rosemary conveys all the dread you need, yet you can also see how future di...

Welcome to Horror Month on the In Reel Deep Podcast! Every Monday in October, we'll be dropping new episodes that break down horror classics from three different eras. But before we get too deep into specifics, Andrew and Steve are here to discuss their horror backgrounds and where they stand on this extremely popular genre. What makes a horror movie? What are their favorite horror movies? And wha...

We've finally made it to this podcast's namesake: the 1979 courtroom drama ...And Justice for All . It earned Al Pacino an Oscar nomination and made "You're out of order!" one of the more famous movie quotes of all time; it's also a film that feels very much of the late 1970s yet focuses on progressive themes along the way. Transgender rights, wrongful imprisonment, the inequities of the criminal...

Let the In Reel Deep Podcast take you back to the glory days of September and October of 2016, when directors Clint Eastwood and Gavin O'Connor brought us Sully and The Accountant , respectively. Why are we revisiting a Tom Hanks pilot biopic and Ben Affleck's autistic math whiz/killing machine? Because we love slightly bad, slightly good movies, and it doesn't get more bad/good than these two. So...

Casablanca is widely regarded as one of the best films of all time. One of our hosts has seen it; the other has not. So of course Andrew and Steve decided to do a before-and-after podcast, sharing pre- and post-viewing thoughts on Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, and a smorgasbord of quotable lines that make both committed fans and newcomers squeal with delight. Welcome to World War...

Alien: Covenant or Prometheus 2 ? Ridley Scott is back with what's essentially a sequel to his polarizing 2012 Alien semi-prequel; if you think that's confusing, wait until you see the movie. Steve welcomes a special guest and Alien lover to the podcast to chat about Michael Fassbender's dual performance, Scott's uneven filmography and late-career recommitment to the Alien cinematic universe, and...

The world embraced Guardians of the Galaxy more than any other Marvel movie not named The Avengers ; how does everyone feel about Vol. 2 ? Steve brings on famed television producer Walt Schwenk as a special guest to examine where this space adventure ranks among the Marvel Cinematic Universe pantheon, and if Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana and company have succeeded in recapturing the magi...

The eighth entry in the Fast & Furious franchise is here, and the In Reel Deep Podcast is back to cover it in detail. To celebrate and analyze every bicep and explosion that The Fate of the Furious offers up, superfan Holc has returned to provide his expert opinion on Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's giant muscles, Jason Statham's magnetic charm, the movie's deep stable of ass-kicking bald men, and whe...

The stars were out at the 2017 Academy Awards, though it'll likely only be remembered for Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway flubbing the Best Picture announcement live on stage. But the other eight hundred hours of Oscar featured deserving winners galore; Andrew and Steve run through all the recipients, including new foes La La Land and Moonlight , before getting to their best of 2016 recap. Did one...

Just in time for Super Bowl 51, the Internet's finest Al Pacino podcast revisits the football opus Any Given Sunday . Oliver Stone's frenetic ode to the pigskin features perhaps the most famous Pacino monologue of all time; it also offers a bevy of naked ladies, drug use, and a car being chopped in half via chainsaw. And tucked away, surprisingly, are progressive comments on football culture that...

Nominations for the 89th Academy Awards have been announced, and movie fans everywhere have already started debating about who's going to win on February 26. And, as always, In Reel Deep is no exception. Andrew and Steve break down the Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress races in an attempt to determine if La La Land , Casey Affleck, and Emma Stone really are locks to take home Oscar gold....

Damien Chazelle blew audiences away with Whiplash , but can he really rejuvenate the musical? According to Andrew and Steve, the answer is a resounding yes. On this episode of the In Reel Deep Podcast, we examine the picture-perfect chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, along with Chazelle's terrific technical work and Justin Hurwitz's score, that brought La La Land a ton of Golden Globes...

Only the finest contributors to American culture receive the Kennedy Center Honors, which is why it's no surprise that Al Pacino was (finally) honored in 2016. To celebrate this special occasion, and to pore over the accompanying Washington Post profile , Andrew and Steve convene a special episode of And Justice for Al to delve into Mr. Pacino's career on the cusp of his visit to Washington, DC. H...

"Kevin!" "Look what ya did, ya little jerk." "I'm gonna kill that kid!" The exclamations from Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York are quite memorable, but what exactly powered these two movies to become Christmas sensations for an entire generation? And how weird is it to see Joe Pesci in a holiday movie for kids? On a special holiday episode of the In Reel Deep Podcast, Andrew and Steve...

"I'm a fan of man!" Fans of Al Pacino's more showy roles regard The Devil's Advocate as a wildly entertaining gem with several fantastic Pacino monologues. For others, it's an bombastic, overacted mess that exposes all worst elements of Al. What does the In Reel Deep team think? The latest episode of And Justice for Al dives into Taylor Hackford's 1997 drama, including skewering Keanu Reeves, comp...

Every year seems to offer its own 'smart' science-fiction movie: Gravity , Interstellar , The Martian , and now Arrival . But does Denis Villeneuve's pre- Blade Runner foray into sci-fi shine like those Oscar-nominated blockbusters? Or does a terrific Amy Adams performance and a top-notch Jóhann Jóhannsson score cover up some serious character and story flaws? You don't have to understand Heptapod...

Barry Jenkins's Moonlight has been wowing critics across the country with its beautiful, poignant depiction of what it's like to grow up black, poor, and gay in Miami. And with the election of Donald Trump, it's taken on a whole new meaning for those trying to find their place in an oft-hateful world. We break down Moonlight 's Oscar chances and the power of truly brilliant filmmaking in the lates...

It's finally here: Al Pacino versus Robert De Niro, squaring off in Michael Mann's renowned crime drama Heat . But is Pacino's insanely quotable performance as Lt. Vincent Hanna good, or just another example of Al's descent into bombastic screaming? And what happens when Pacino is clearly upstaged by his long-time rival De Niro? We examine every inch of Heat on the latest episode of the Internet's...

Netflix's Stranger Things is perhaps the entertainment of the summer; from Winona Ryder's resurgence to how it borrows so genuinely from Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, it's classic storytelling done right. What it also does is blur the line between cinema and television; in five years, will it matter what's streaming and what's in theaters? That's the question we attempt to answer on this epis...

After months of hype, Suicide Squad has hit theaters. And, unfortunately, it's a bit of a trainwreck. What's wrong with the DC Extended Universe? How can a villain team-up starring Will Smith and Margot Robbie be such a letdown? Is Jared Leto's Joker really that bad? And how does this impact the upcoming Wonder Woman and Justice League ? Steve sits down with a DC movie mega fan (yes, one actually...