Mary Versus the Movies

Bah humbug. Mary was never a fan of the Ernest character, and this movie did nothing to change her mind. If anything, it may have broken her Christmas spirit.

Thanksgiving is about family, so this week we're welcoming back Mary's sister Anne Jones as the guest for our look at the rock documentary/concert film about U2, Anne's favorite band, but not Mary's. Despite being sisters and living under the same roof for… 17 years? 18? Mary has never actually seen her sister's favorite movie. So it's time to sit down and take a look, and hope this doesn't turn o...

For some reason, Mary's family wouldn't take her to see the live-action He-Man movie, despite buying her all the action figures her heart desired. Turns out, this was a wise decision. From the people who brought us  Death Wish 2 and  The Apple comes one of the cheapest-looking movies we've had the misfortune of covering. Why is this movie set in California and not Eternia? Does Dolph Lundgren have...

Sam Raimi's cult classic has long-eluded Mary, who was afraid she'd find the film too terrifying anyway. What happens when she finally confronts her fears? Is Sam Raimi the Orson Welles of horror? And just how great is Bruce Campbell? (Pretty great, let's be honest.)

Our first bonus episode is an extended talk with guest Alana Phelan, about her own history with seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show , the community she found there, and how these things helped shape her own personal development and relationships. We talk not just about the movie, and midnight movies in general, but, appropriately enough, a lot about sex (but, uh, not in a porny... horny?... way)....

We welcome back author Alana Phelan (@hellolibrarian) to talk about Richard O'Brien's follow-up to  The Rocky Horror Picture Show , wherein Brad and Janet return and are subjected to the horrors of reality television and psychological torture, all backed with a New Wave soundtrack. It's an odd movie, and better than we were expecting.

This week we welcome special guest Jessica Elsener to the show to discuss the David Cronenberg film  The Dead Zone , a Stephen King story that asks the question--hey, if you really are a psychic, maybe sometimes it's OK to [redact] a guy you know will turn out to be another Hitler? Jessica has a Bandcamp page: https://jessicaclariceelsener.bandcamp.com/ The music heard in this episode is from her...

This horror film (that's not a werewolf movie) starring Albert Finney is a strange mix of 1970s New York cop movie and New Age fetishization of Native Americans, with some commentary on urban renewal. Parts of it are compelling, parts of it are cringe, and all of it is grimey. 

This fantasy-comedy from Monty Python's Terry Jones is not a great film, or even a good one, but there's a few interesting ideas to be found in it, a few funny sequences, and does feature concept art by Alan Lee. But it also features a very badly-miscast Tim Robbins, who goes down like a plate of lutefisk. There's no Valhalla earned by watching this.  CW: rape

We go long on this episode about the cult British comedy starring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann as two drunken, unemployed actors who spend a weekend in the country. Under the surface is a surprising film about the end of the 1960s, the end of prolonged adolescence, and the end of a friendship. We talk about Doctor Who, Charles Dickens, George Harrison, and finally Mary gets into a rant about t...

Summer is over, and we're back to school with a story about bullying, manic pixie dream grannies, and that dreaded term, character development. What would a Werner Herzog version look like? Why couldn't we get more Martin Mull? And hey, who's that maintence man?

We bring the summer to a close with a very silly "Savage" Steve Holland movie starring John Cusack as a cynical cartoonist and Demi Moore as the singer he helps to save her family home on Nantucket. Sure, it's frequently juvenile, but it's a fun movie, features Bobcat Goldthwait, Joe Flaherty, Joel Murray, and Curtis Armstrong. We ask why Goldthwait is funny, what's the deal with Demi Moore's hair...

When we saw this was playing at a local theater, we bent the rules so we could take in the story of how punk rock blew up a high school, thanks to the Ramones. A goofy, campy teensploitation movie produced by the great Roger Corman, this episode has everything from both Mary *and* Dennis singing, to an interview with the program director of the Ambler Theater, to a celebration of grindhouse, red-s...

This dark film about dirtbag kids who learn one of their group is a murderer is better than expected, with great performances from Keanu Reeves (one of his first films), Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck, Crispin Glover, and Dennis Hopper. A movie that zigs when you think it'll zag, it has none of the dayglo pop of other teen films from the 1980s, and feels closer to the world of the 1990s that Mary remem...

Robert Townsend's showbiz satire on the limited roles for black actors in the 1980s is sharp, funny, and an early example of the kind of self-financed movies that would rise to prominence in the 1990s. Co-written and co-starring Keenen Ivory Wayans, who's own touches are all over this movie.

Summer means baseball, so we take on the sports comedy  Major League , the crude, flawed, but often very comedy about a team set up to lose who goes all the way. We're talkin' baseball so much you might think this was an AM radio station.

Dennis finally gets to introduce Mary to a movie he loved as a kid, a video game space opera starring Robert Preston that lifts liberally from Arthurian legend.

We take a break from movies to welcome to the show a special guest, the writer, comedian, voice actor, and director Tom Scharpling from  The Best Show with Tom Scharpling . Tom is one of the inspirations for our show, and we are so excited to finally welcome him. His 2021 best-selling memoir, It Never Ends , is being released in paperback, and in celebration, there will be a 24-hour episode of  Th...

Part I of Starman vs The Last Star Fighter commenses with John Carpenter's story of a woman who falls in love with an alien who looks like her dead husband. We talk about the Voyager probes, alien invasion movies, Jeff Bridge's stunt-butt, and the 1983 Sixers.

Finishing up our Cage Match, we have a special guest! We are joined by Jon Solomon, DJ at WPRB and head of Comedy Minus One records, to discuss the LA-centric romantic comedy starring Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman. We talk about music, teen comedies, The Best Show, and what happens when a Punk Rock guy falls in love with a New Wave girl.

Jim Jarmusch's anthology film set in Memphis clears up a mystery for Mary, and Dennis is very excited to revisit this indie film which stars, among others, Joe Strummer, Steve Buscemi, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. We talk about the declining American Empire, racial strife, and some of the worst motels we've ever stayed at.

Round 3 of our Cage Match is this Francis Ford Coppola time travel comedy starring Kathleen Turner as a woman who wakes up as her teenage self in 1960 and has to decide whether she wants to stay with her future ex-husband, played by Nicolas Cage.

Round 2 of our Cage Match brings us a very dark... comedy? about a yuppie who thinks he's a vampire, resulting in one of Nicholas Cage's strangest performances. We talk about  American Psycho , whether it's OK to eat bugs, and the erotic potential of hot yogurt. Look, it's a very odd movie.

This week is Round 1 in our Cage Match, wherein Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine are two Philly kids who get sent to Vietnam and come back severely damaged. Mary talks a little too much about Cage's abs, way too much about the city of Philadelphia, and possibly not enough about birds.

Dennis does a fill-in show this week while Mary recovers from a burst eardrum.