Low Key

James Gunn's The Suicide Squad doesn't give its characters much plot armor — that enchanted substance, created by corporations and screenwriters, that protects bankable characters from dying, no matter what. Will Bloodsport (Idris Elba) make it through the mission alive? Will Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie)? Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnamon)? Nothing is guaranteed, and it's no spoiler to say some of the cha...

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in The Last Mercenary , a new Netflix French film about a master-of-disguise mercenary named The Mist (Van Damme) who comes out of hiding when a bureaucratic error threatens the safety of his long-lost son. There's also a race to keep something called The Big Mac from falling into the wrong hands. But it's so much more needlessly complicated than that. The Last Mercenar...

A bold decision by Kevin Smith in the new Netflix series Masters of the Universe: Revelations has angered some fans of the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe . We talk about how the decision actually solves a big problem with He-Man — and share a personal theory about why Adam has been less than honest with Teela for the last 40 years or so. There are also lots of '80s and '90s-focuse...

The very prolific Steven Soderbergh takes Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm, Julia Fox, Amy Seimetz, and many more top actors through a complicated scheme in 1950s Detroit, when society and the auto industry are on the brink of major change. All that time you've spent reading up on fuel emission standards will finally be rewarded. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...

Summer of Soul , the directorial debut from Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, takes us back to Harlem in 1969 for a series of concerts that included a who's who of brilliant Black artists, from Stevie Wonder to Nina Simone to Sly and the Family Stone to Mahalia Jackson, among many, many more. Tim, Aaron and Keith had pretty different reactions to the film, which almost never came to be: For more than 50...

In this episode, dads Aaron and Tim and non-dad Keith discuss the Kevin Hart Netflix comedy Fatherhood , about a dad struggling to raise his very young daughter alone. We talk about diapers, dumb preschools, what the first steps look like, and lots of other dad stuff, and what we love and fear about raising kids. Also: Shoutout to a notorious Memphis roller coaster, the perfect metaphor for parent...

At some point last week, everyone watching Loki collectively decided the Time-Keepers were full of shit. For Keith and Tim, co-hosts of the Low Key podcast, that moment occurred in this episode, when co-host Aaron broke it all down for them. We also talk about Kang the Conquerer and some other fun theories. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sweet Tooth is your typical coming of age tale about a post-apocalyptic, pandemic scorched Earth with a human-deer hybrid kid searching for his lost mother in the (mostly) lawless Western United States - average Netflix stuff, right? The story from the show differs greatly in some aspects from the Vertigo comic book of the same name. The changes aren’t as drastic as The Walking Dead where we witne...

M.O.D.O.K. stands for Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing. Is he also designed to be good subject for a Hulu stop-motion comedy? We talk this episode about whether the brainchild of Patton Oswalt and friends can sustain a show. We agree on at least one thing: the look of M.O.D.O.K. is absolutely great. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Those Who Wish Me Dead , the awesomely titled new thriller from Taylor Sheridan, stars Angelina Jolie as a smokejumper who must protect a boy with valuable secrets from a pair of assassins. Does it work? We're divided this week, in large part because we aren't sure if the MacGuffin at the center of the film works. (A MacGuffin, of course, is a plot device that serves no real purpose except to move...

The Outside Story , directed by Casimir Nozkowski, defies the rule that films need to be high-stakes. It's the tale of an introverted editor (Brian Tyree Henry) who gets locked out of his apartment and is forced to spend a few hours... outdoors. We liked it. Some critics are mad at this small, kind-hearted movie for not being about police brutality or the living wage, and we gently recommend that...

Invincible , from Amazon Prime, is the work of a super team. Created by The Walking Dead mastermind Robert Kirkman, produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who have developed a spectacular track record), and voiced by A-listers led by JK Simmons and recent Oscar nominee Steven Yeun, it's the most impressive cartoon we've seen in a damn long time. There are many reasons we consider if the superhe...

This week, we cover why this year's Oscars were weird, whether movies are doomed, and how  The Falcon and the Winter Soldier  continues a Marvel tradition of murderers with perfectly reasonable ideas.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the Oscar-nominated short film Two Distant Strangers , a young Black man (Joey Bada$$) finds himself trapped in a hellish time loop, relentlessly targeted by a racist white cop. The film is written by Emmy winner Travon Free, who directs with Martin Desmond Roe. Free says the film is meant to illustrate the exhausting, horrific repetition of police killings of unarmed Black people. (You can lis...

Concrete Cowboy is a coming of age story with cowboys but also with Black people in Philly; maybe not the combination you were expecting. The film pulls off most of what it intends to do, including one of the better story arcs for estranged parents seeking to help their child through a difficult time of their life. And surprisingly, there are a ton of parallels in narrative structure to the award-...

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, from showrunner Malcolm Spellman, builds on our nostalgia for buddy movies like Lethal Weapon 2. But it also offers a glimpse at what might have been if HBO had moved forward with Confederate , a proposed show from the creator of Game of Thrones that Spellman was to have worked on. Spellman and his team have managed to include real-world racial struggles and nuan...

When you think of garbage, don't think of Coming 2 America : We very much enjoyed the Coming to America sequel, despite the debate around the film and quibbles with the Zamundan system of succession. If you miss this episode you'll also miss out on some solid recommendations for underrated Wesley Snipes films. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In awards-season darling Nomadland , Frances McDormand plays a woman named Fern who takes to the open road when her husband — and town — dies. We talk about what Fern wants, whether the movie should be harder on American businesses, and some interesting similarities between Nomadland and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I Care a Lot is about a crooked legal guardian (Rosamund Pike) who makes a living stripping seniors of all their worldly possessions. Things go great (or terribly, if we're talking about morality) until she targets Jennifer Peterson (Diane Wiest), who is connected to the worst person you could ever cross (Peter Dinklage). The film has gotten good reviews, but criticism from viewers who don't like...

Keith, Aaron and special guest Sam from the Sam Said It podcast discuss Judas and the Black Messiah, starring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield. Believe the marketing — the protagonist is federal informant William O’Neal and not the groundbreaking leader he got assassinated, Fred Hampton.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Malcolm and Marie is a movie about a tense, revealing argument between a budding filmmaker and an aspiring actress after his critically acclaimed directorial debut. The premise sounds tame on the surface but the film goes in unexpected directions and features an acting masterclass between people in front of the camera - John David Washington and Zendaya. Check out this episode for a spoiler filled...

Three episodes into WandaVision, the guys discuss what seems to be happening so far, and share some theories. Is Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) controlling everything? it seems like we get some explanations in the fourth episode, out this weekend, so we're eager to see if our guesses prove correct. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now that everyone has had time to see Pieces of a Woman — or at least find out what the astonishing Kornél Mundruczó film is about — we can discuss Vanessa Kirby's Oscar-calibre turn as a woman whose pregnancy ends tragically. Please rate, review and subscribe, follow us on IG @thelowkeypod, and check out our interview with Mundruczó over at the MovieMaker podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast....

Regina King's directorial debut One Night in Miami imagines a conversation between Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Cassius Clay... who will soon become Muhammad Ali. We talk on this episode about the expectations of Black stars who are often expected to be activists as well as celebrities. And, since we recorded this on the last night of the Trump presidency, we talk about how Black leaders ha...

Pixar's Soul is the story of a jazz musician named Joe (Jamie Foxx) who is on the brink of achieving his dreams... when he falls in a manhole and dies. From there, he meets 22 (Tina Fey) an entitled being who doesn't want to be alive. We start off rooting for Joe as he desperately clings to life. But then we're supposed to root for 22. And then their interests come into conflict. Where should our...