Mary Versus the Movies

David Lean's final film, an adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel about a white woman who accuses an Indian man of rape, is--at best--deeply flawed, but features several great performances and stunning scenery. Too bad it also features Alec Guinness in brownface, not to mention the difficult subject matter.  CW: rape/sexual assault, racial issues, Brits

Hollywood tries to give a broad adaptation of Malory's Le Morte Darthur , and is fitfully successful--bright Technicolor and on-location filming doesn't make up for Robert Taylor's defiantly-American accent, and the bowdlerized romance between Lancelot and Guinevere doesn't exactly sizzle, but as a product of 1950s studio filmmaking, it could be worse.   We'd like to than Patreon-supporter Stephen...

Imaging you're really, really good at cosplay--so good you create a time loop that dooms you. We talk nostalgia, the vastness of the Great Lakes, and the San Francisco Music Box Company, among other things.

It's the movie that started this whole podcast: Russel Mulcahy's ridiculous, awesome, Queen-scored tale of an immortal Scottish swordsman/New York antiques dealer who goes up against the villainous Kurgan. And in honor of the event, we have a special guest, comedian and voice actor Jason Gore from  The Best Show with Tom Scharpling and 108.9 The Hawk . It's a great chat, and we're grateful to Jaso...

Everyone's seen this horror comedy about teen vampires--except for Mary, who apparently didn't believe in fun when she was a kid. This movie rocks.

This massive hit about a hooker who meets her Prince Charming maybe isn't the most progressive movie around—it's certainly no Angel —but for what it is, it's pretty cute. Sure, there's nothing groundbreaking here—it could easily have been the plot of a pre-code screwball comedy, and probably was. But Julia Roberts and Richard Gere have good chemistry here, and you can really see why this movie mad...

  A largely inessential musical that completely bowdlerizes Mark Twain's satirical novel, it gets by on bright colors and Bing Crosby's charm. Look, I don't hate this movie, it's fine, but there's definitely something lacking--the tunes aren't very memorable, the romance is slight, and it's very strange to have one knight speaking with a very thick New York accent. This is a free preview of our mo...

William Friedkin's crime drama about a secret service agent looking for revenge against a counterfeiting ring is hands-down one of the most intense movies we've watched for the show. From Willem Dafoe's menacing  counterfeiter, to William Petersen's full frontal male nudity, to one of the wildest car chases ever put on film, it's a gripping neo-noir exercise in excess.

This movie left us conflicted--what do you do when a movie is well-made, has some great performances, has progressive views on transpeople, and yet features an incredibly unlikable protagonist that it expects you to root for, and creates strawmen feminists to get angry about? Well, that's the magic of movies, baby.

For years, Mary'd heard this fantasy from George Lucas and Ron Howard was a horrible flop that should be forgotten. Turns out, it's a pretty charming adventure, with a great cast, good effects, and a witches duel that doesn't disappoint. 

In 1981, watching two men spend two hours talking about art and philosophy as they sip soup must have seemed strange, but now we live in the age of podcasts, talk radio, and YouTube, so really, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory's colloquy was really just ahead of its time. An exploration of how we stave off sleepwalking through life, a story of the search for authenticty, and an exercize in how to m...

Spaulding Gray's spoken word concert film, directed by Jonathan Demme, really surpasses our expectations, and leaves us thinking about the nature of performance, of trying to capture art on record, and whether or not "morality is a movable feast".

Schoolgirl by day, hooker by night, on the hunt for a serial killer of her fellow street-walkers, Angel is a real ride of a movie that is surprisingly compassionate about the victims and the assorted outsiders and weirdos making a living on Hollywood Boulevard. 

We were recommended this now-obscure comedy, a pointless... remake? of  Cabaret , set amongst wealthy Los Angeles college students. There's no Nazis, no real musical numbers, just a biker boyfriend, gay panic, and some very toxic ideas about sex and romance.

We're caught between the moon and New York City when Dennis shows Mary a film he really liked as a kid, the romantic comedy  Arthur --a film which dares to ask "can a rich drunk end up getting what he wants and experience very little personal growth whatsoever?" And yet! It's a pretty fun movie!

Preview of our new show! We kick off our patreon-only podcast about Arthurian film with a very special movie, 1989's  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , which introduced Mary to the idea of the Holy Grail. It's Indie versus the Nazis, which is how you know it's a good one.

It's a real "How have you never seen this?" episode, when Mary finally sits down and watches the John Cusack-Ione Skye romance with the iconic boombox scene. Turns out this movie, Cameron Crowe's first as a director, is much smarter and more interesting than one famous image, in no small part down to John Mahoney's performance as Skye's father. 

Mary is going in blind to this movie, a rare non-Star Wars film that features Mark Hamill on-screen. It's a semi-autobiographical movie about director Sam Fuller's experiences in World War II as part of the First Infantry Division, which ran the gammut from Sicilian grandmothers cooking them dinner to liberating a concentration camp.

There's something audacious about making an over-three-hour film lionizing American Communists and the Russian Revolution and releasing it in the same year Ronald Reagan comes to power, but Warren Beatty's epic balances romance, politics, and historical sweep in a way that recalls films like  Lawrence of Arabia and  Gone With the Wind , but without all the ambient racism. Written, directed, and st...

It's Mary vs. James Bond Part II, as we take on the other Bond movie of 1983 and the non-canonical return of Sean Connery. It's a better movie than  Octopussy , which doesn't require much. It also features a yacht with an absolutely wild history. 

This week it's Mary vs James Bond, a franchise she never really got into or grew up with, but Dennis did and always liked, especially the films starring Roger Moore. This movie is a mess, from its central premise to its ridiculous title. On the one hand, Moore is too old, the plot is nonsense, the India segment is at  Temple   of Doom  levels of cultural insensitivity, there's a French guy playing...

What do you do when you're one of the world's biggest movie stars and the lead in two franchies? Well, if you're Sylvester Stallone, you make one of the more eccentric exercizes in copaganda,  Cobra , a barely-coherent thriller with few thrills but a lot of baffling choices. Why do we have a serial killer  and a cult? Why is Nielsen dancing with a robot pimp? What in the name of God did he do to t...

Well, in what feels like a fitting end to 2022, Mary has covid, and can't record a full episode. So we're putting out a bonus episode of material that previously was cut--a mix of bloopers and cut conversations that just didn't fit into their episodes. Oh, and swearing. We'll be back as soon as Mary and Dennis can be in the same room together again. Let's hope 2023 is a lot healthier.

Though she watched  Pee-wee's Playhouse as a kid, this Christmas special somehow passed Mary by. But you're never too old for Pee-wee Herman, or for a selection of guest stars like Cher, Little Richard, Grace Jones, and K.D. Lang, not to mention Santa himself. We talk about variety shows, nostalgia, and Mary defends a much-maligned baked good.

This tv movie starring Henry Winkler as a New Hampshire Scrooge living during the Great Depression is pretty lackluster and looks like an episode of  The Waltons --it's not the worst thing ever, but it's also not Mary's new favorite version of Dickens' story, one of her favorite books.