Living for the Cinema

Billy Eichner stars as Bobby, a single, successful, gay podcaster in his ‘40’s living in the big city who thinks he has everything he wants….until he meets Aaron one night in a club, a dreamy attorney played by Luke MacFarlane.  And now Bobby THINKS he wants love…..as does Aaron…but it’s never that simple is it?  Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) directs this raucous romantic...

Noah Baumbach directs this wistful coming-of-age comedy starring Greta Gerwig as the eponymous Frances who is a 27 year old aspiring dancer trying to find her place in the world after her best friend/roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner) decides to move away with her fiancé to France.  We follow her misadventures as Frances struggles to find steady work, a suitable home, and maybe even a bit of romance....

1992 was just a great year for independent cinema……you had SO many memorable smaller films directed by both new directors like Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs) and veteran directors like Robert Altman (The Player).  Amidst this crop was this underseen gem directed by Carl Franklin which didn’t have much of a theatrical release nor did it receive much in the way of Oscar attention.  However it DI...

Ten years ago, we saw the second big-screen adaptation of a popular British graphic novel – the previous one (Judge Dredd) which came out in the 1995 starred Sylvester Stallone and was widely disliked by both fans and non-fans of the original comic.  As a result, expectations for this latest version were pretty low in the lead-up to its fall release.   And then people saw it…..and most were pretty...

Back in 2019, actress Olivia Wilde dazzled many folks with Booksmart which was her directorial debut – it remains one of the funniest and most inventive comedies of recent years.  So as her follow-up, she has given us an original thriller which is much more ambitious….but is it just as good?  Well it has a mind-bending premise about a seemingly utopian sequestered village in the desert known as th...

Twenty-five years ago, audiences saw what would be THE first true movie star performance from eventual three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis headlining a large, mainstream action adventure film….and this would also be the last time they would see this as well.  No matter because as directed by Michael Mann, it was quite memorable to be taken back to 1757 and told the story of Hawkeye, a white m...

In a first for this podcast, I review an entire season of a streaming/TV show…. But not just ANY show... this one happens to be the surprisingly popular spin-off from The Karate Kid movie trilogy from the 1980’s.   It’s a serialized continuation of the adventures of Johnny Lawrence (Billy Zabka), Danny LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), and so many other kooky characters inhabiting this crazy martial arts-o...

Seeing as it’s September, it’s that time of year again…..time for the kids to go back to school!  And what better way to commemorate this time period than revisiting what MIGHT be one of the strangest high school comedies from the ‘80’s?  It’s the simple of story of Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko) a mild-mannered Senior student who gets challenged to an after-school brawl by the new intimidating...

“LA Crime Week” continues with this Neo-Noir thriller directed by Roman Polanski which is considered by many cinephiles to be one of the best films of the 1970’s.  It’s a complex mystery focusing on water distribution, adultery, and murder among other several other matters – the private detective who has been hired to investigate is played by Jack Nicholson in one of his earlier breakout performan...

Right on the heels of Boogie Nights, yet ANOTHER all-timer is about to turn twenty-five!  And this one is one hell of a sprawling crime drama set in the Los Angeles in the 1950’s focusing on three different LAPD cops played by Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey.  It’s quite an elaborate tale involving murder, prostitution, racism, corruption, blackmail, abuse, and even glamour at points –...

RRR (2022) This is the epic story of Ramu (Allur Sitarama Raju) and Bheem (NT Rama Rao Jr), two fierce soldiers on opposite sides of a long-running conflict in India one hundred years ago between the local residents and their British colonizers.  Ramu reports to the British military and is on a mission to find the lead revolutionary who has been hiding in nearby forests - that revolutionary happen...

Twenty-five years ago, director Paul Thomas Anderson shook up the cinematic world with this epic tale focusing on the adult film industry in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  He borrowed techniques from Robert Altman and Martin Scorcese but he made them his own with this sprawling tale of Eddie Adams, a teenager played by Mark Wahlberg with ONE special gift.  This one special gift helps Eddie become an inst...

Remember when Nicholas Cage was known as Nicolas Coppola?  Remember when the mall was THE place to hang out?  Remember when half the girls in your high school class were trying to look like Pat Benatar?  Remember when Sean Penn was funny?? :o Well if you don’t remember any of those things, here is an iconic time capsule movie to remind of those and many other things from forty years ago.  Yes this...

The Predator has returned!  Well an earlier version of the fierce hunter from another planet…..and THIS time, he has visited America’s Great Plains more than 300 years ago.  So is this a prequel to the 1987 sci-fi action thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger?  Well sort of.... This time, the story focuses on Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young member of the Comanche Nation who fancies herself a hun...

For the next couple of weeks, we will be taking a break to get our proverbial batteries recharged - we'll be ok and be back to releasing new episodes before the end of the month! ;)   In the meantime, enjoy this special episode going back through our catalog of more than 120 episodes to rank THE Best Needle-Drops so far – for this episode, we are ranking the BEST FILM SCORES so far..... Host:...

For the next couple of weeks, we will be taking a break to get our proverbial batteries recharged - we'll be back to releasing new episodes before the end of the month!   In the meantime, enjoy this special episode going back through our catalog of more than 120 episodes to rank THE Best Needle-Drops so far – there will be two separate episodes for SONGS and MUSICAL SCORES.  This one is for t...

Brad Pitt stars in this fast-paced (literally) action comedy from director David Leitch who previously helmed Deadpool 2 and Atomic Blonde.  It almost entirely takes place on a high speed train barreling through Japan which has some antagonistic passengers to say the least.  Among them are a group of assassins who each seem to have different missions but involving the same set of people, mainly a...

“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner….” – Neil McCauley, 1995 And that’s the apparent thesis for one of the most beloved films of the past thirty years spoken by living legend Robert DeNiro sitting across from fellow living legend Al Pacino.  Or is it really the main theme of the movie?  Maybe it’s...

45 years ago during the summer of Star Wars and Smokey & the Bandit….there was only one action hero who dared to step into the ring and his name was Moore…Sir Roger Moore. 😊 By this point, Moore had played the character of James Bond in two previous entries in this franchise that made some money and had their fans but were still dwarfed by the popularity of the previous films starring Sean Co...

Oscar-winning writer/director Jordan Peele returns with this third film after the horror smashes Get Out and Us…..and this time, he’s taking things in a slightly different direction.  There’s still horror involved but there’s also sci-fi and even many western elements.  This story focuses on the Haywoods, a brother (Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya) and sister (Keke Palmer) running a horse ranch in sou...

Remember when taking pictures required the use of an actual CAMERA and how the best way to see the fruits of your labor was to have them developed as PHOTOS?  Well even if you don’t, it wasn’t that long ago before the age of smartphones – this film actually came out just twenty years ago and features at its center, one unique individual whose job is to develop these pictures for the general public...

When this film first came out 35 years ago, one of the taglines was “The Future of Law Enforcement.”  Well it’s become abundantly clear that the future has now become the present upon revisiting this sci-fi action classic directed by the legendary Paul Verhoeven who would also go on to direct films such as Total Recall, Starship Troopers, and…..Showgirls?  This remains of his best and most influen...

The son of Odon returns in his fourth movie within the Marvel Cinematic Universe once again starring Chris Hemsworth as the titular her and directed for the second time (after the previous one, Thor Ragnarok) by Taika Waititi.  This time, he has a dangerous new enemy who is out to kill ALL gods (himself included) played by Oscar winner Christian Bale.  He is also reuniting with a former love – ret...

RIP to James Caan, one of the more legendary American actors to emerge from the stellar crop of the 1970’s. ☹ He has delivered many a strong performance in many strong movies including The Godfather where he played Sonny Corleone.   Over his impressive 50+ year acting career, his starring role as the eponymous thief in this crime drama is considered by many (himself included) to be his best overal...

For the week of July 4, 2022, we will be taking a break due to the holidays and to get our proverbial batteries recharged - we'll be ok and be back to releasing new episodes next week! ;)  In the meantime, enjoy this remastered episode of my review of a comedy classic..... This movie was directed by the late, great comedy legend Ivan Reitman who would give us Ghostbusters a couple of years la...