Legends Podcast

The swingin' Sixties have long been Hollywood's playground. Most films romanticize the era's free spirits and even freer sexual attitudes in a time of social change and historical upheaval. While recent nostalgia trips like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood hint at but ultimately gloss over the era's darker side, Edgar Wright's latest film pulls no punches in showing that some things are better left i...

Betty White's film and television career spanned seven decades and was filled with reinvention. From radio actress to game show staple, from a Golden Girl to being Hot in Cleveland, she never failed to leave us laughing. In 1999, she played a foul-mouthed pensioner with a penchant for reptiles in a creature-feature from Fox and Stan Winston Studios. Co-starring Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver...

Fifty years ago, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's bestselling novel premiered in movie theaters to near-universal acclaim, spent twenty-three consecutive weeks at number one at box office, and became the highest-grossing movie of all-time. Starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall, the film won the Oscars for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor...

Twenty years ago, Eminem was one of the most successful - and divisive - recording artists in the world. He was a white rapper from the poor suburbs of Detroit whose meteoric rise to fame was perhaps only eclipsed by his ability to cause controversy with his lyrics. Director Curtis Hanson (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, L.A. Confidential) and screenwriter Scott Silver (Joker) created a movie base...

Director Matthew Vaughn's series of Kingman films, based on the comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, focus on a secret British intelligence agency. A prequel, also directed by Vaughn, telling the origin story of the Kingsman during The Great War, was released last year after being delayed eight times by production issues and the pandemic. With an all-star cast and the series' signature hype...

Canadian treasure Ryan Reynolds has gone from rom-com star to failed DC superhero to successful Marvel anti-hero, as well as doing action movies with The Rock and playing a Pokemon. He returned to the video game genre with his most recent film, playing a non-player character in an online video game who levels up to save his virtual world. With cameos and pop culture references galore, this film by...

Director Jeymes Samuel's debut film brings together the all-stars of the American Wild West - Nat Love, Rufus Buck, Marshall Bass Reeves, "Stagecoach" Mary Fields, and "Treacherous" Trudy Smith, among others - all real-life historical figures, and all of them black - in a team-up movie for Netflix. And befitting an Avengers-style Western, Samuel assembled an all-star cast including Jonthan Majors,...

Director Walter Hill's third movie adapted source material based on Greek history following an army of soldiers on a long march home across hostile territory. In this case, the soldiers are a group of street toughs making their way  across a 1970s New York City populated by colorful gangs. When the film was released, it was accompanied by an outbreak of violence linked to its screenings, including...

Director John Carpenter always wanted to make a martial-arts movie. He got his chance with his eighth feature film - and his third time teaming up with actor Kurt Russell  - an action-comedy set in the mythical and murky underworld of San Francisco's Chinatown. Fox rushed the movie through production and release to avoid competing with a similar-themed Eddie Murphy vehicle, The Golden Child, leavi...

The creator of John Wick and director of Hardcore Henry teamed up to create an action-comedy movie starring Better Call Saul actor Bob Odenkirk. What more do you need to know, buddy? Originally postponed by the pandemic, the film was released in theaters in March '21 with a PVOD release a month later. It turns out that nobody asks the hard questions like Nobody - and that question is, specifically...

Director Baz Luhrman's theater-themed "Red Curtain" trilogy drew to a close in 2001 with the follow-up to his breakout hit Romeo + Juliet. As with Baz's take on The Bard, this film was filled with anachronism. It was a jukebox musical that fused cabaret, Broadway, vaudeville, and Bollywood. It was a lavish period piece set in turn-of-the-century bohemian Paris to the songs of the MTV Generation. A...

Director David Cronenberg is best known for mind-bending body horror in films like Scanners, Videodrome, and The Fly, but he made his first "comic book movie" in 2005, an Academy Award-nominated adaptation of a graphic novel - and we do mean graphic. Starring Viggo Mortensen as a small-town diner owner whose mobster past catches up with him, the film was a modest success both financially and criti...

The Matrix Trilogy redefined action movies, but by the third film in the franchise it had begun to topple under its own weight. The film's creators, the Wachowskis, seemed to recognize this and went on to other projects, forswearing any future sequels. However, based on the profitability of the franchise, rumors of a reboot persisted, either with or without the creators' involvement. And so a four...

Robert Zemeckis was an unemployed movie director at the start of the 1980s, but by the end of the decade he was one of the most successful blockbuster directors with films like Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? under his belt. He got his big break from Michael Douglas, who hired Zemeckis to direct an action-adventure romantic comedy film starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner. The movi...

As a holiday treat, we're taking a break from our usual format and laying down a commentary track for one of our favorite movies! In the wake of Spider-Man: No Way Home becoming the highest-grossing film since 2019 and the biggest Sony release of all time, we're celebrating the dawn of the Spider-Verse with a real-time discussion while we watch the movie together! Grab a bagel, put on your sweatpa...

Bob Clark's 1983 film A Christmas Story has become a holiday classic, but for most kids born in the '80s, a Red Ryder BB gun was not at the top of their wish lists. We wanted something a little more high-tech - the Nintendo Entertainment System. HBO Max's latest original film, from Goon director Michael Dowse and novelist Kevin Jakubowski, updates this age-old tale for the millennial crowd, with h...

The Christmas rom-com movie genre got a much-needed update in 2020 from Hulu with the release of Clea DuVall's semi-autobiographical coming-out comedy-of-Yuletide-errors. Filmed earlier that year just prior to the Covid shutdown, the Pittsburgh-shot holiday flick starred Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as the lead couple. Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Mary Holland, Dan Levy, Mary Steenburgen and...

J.R.R. Tolkien's massively popular fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings, was long thought to be unfilmable due to the size and scope of the story and the technology limitations of the times. Kiwi director Peter Jackson proved them all wrong by shooting all three movies back-to-back in sixteen months at 150 locations and soundstages across New Zealand to the tune of $280 million. The films collectiv...

Director Joe Carnahan has given us intense action before in films like Smokin' Aces and The Grey, but he takes it to the next level in this 2021 Hulu original film. Actor Frank Grillo is a guy who knows how to beat 'em up - he's even gone toe-to-toe with Captain America - but he brings his A-game to this arcade-inspired action comedy. You know we had to do a time-loop movie, right? Legends Podcast...

The stars of Star Trek: The Next Generation made the jump to the big screen with Star Trek: Generations, though they were somewhat overshadowed by William Shatner's Captain Kirk - good thing they killed him off! For their first "stand-alone" feature film, Captain Picard and crew faced off against their biggest threat - the Borg - as they travelled back in time to ensure that one small warp flight...

Fall back in time with Legends Podcast! All month long we're talking about time travel, paradoxes, and having your daughters save reality.   29 years have passed since Bogus journey was released. In this new world, do we need more Bill and Ted?? We dust off a new addition, to an old classic and see if it is any good this time around!?   This is Chronovember! For more geeky podcasts visit GonnaGeek...

We're celebrating the return of our time travel theme month with the return of director Terry Gilliam, who last appeared during Chronovember with his 1981 film Time Bandits. This time around, we've got Bruce Willis acting against type as a stoic inmate sent back in time to discover the source of an apocalyptic  virus and Brad Pitt acting against type as the motor-mouthed mental patient who may or...

Legends Podcast is pressing pause on Chronovember to talk about Denis Villenueve's latest visually stunning reimagining of a beloved Eighties classic film based on long-thought-to-be-unfilmable sci-fi text! Frank Herbert's 1965 novel was a groundbreaking achievement in the genre, but David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation was a commercial and critical failure. With Villenueve's film getting a simultan...

Legends of Halloween is rounding out the month with a Guillermo del Toro classic. This Spanish-language coming-of-age ghost story, set in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War, is among del Toro's most critically-acclaimed films, along with its spiritual successor, Pan's Labyrinth. Now, we're collecting slugs, swigging baby-flavored rum, and playing with unexploded ordinance for El Espinazo del Diablo...

Legends of Halloween is casting a spell on you with a sexy teen witch movie that turns 25 this year. Starring Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Rachel True, along with two stars of 1996's other horror hit, Scream, Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich. The movie became a cult classic, with a long life on home video leading to a 2020 sequel movie and inspiring a Katy Perry song. Now, we're getting in touch with...