Matinee Manatees

Our patrons have spoken!  The winner of this quarter's sword-and-sorcery poll is 1988's Willow, directed by Ron Howard and starring Warwick Davis, Val Kilmer, and Patricia Hayes.  It's a fun little fairy tale and it makes very little sense and that's a lot of fun.  The manatees discuss the rules of magic, best wizard voices, and what even is a possum.  Have a listen, stay indoors, be safe, we love...

Do you guys remember Jumanji?  The first one, from 1995?  Directed by Joe Johnston, starring Robin Williams and Bonnie Hunt and David Alan Grier? With Matinee Manatees alums Kirsten Dunst and Jonathan Hyde? Well, we like it. Float along for bonus tips on mystical board game speedrunning, bad car repair praxis, and possible alternative podcasts hosted by monkeys.  For free!

After some glitches, the manatees are back!  This time around they're watching culturally iconic Top Gun, directed by Tony Scott and starring Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, and Anthony Edwards.  And it's... um.  Well.  Float along with the manatees as they pine for an Iceman and Goose movie instead, discuss the merits of voiceover narratives in action movies, and detail why Maverick shoul...

We're back, and for the cold season we're going straight to Morocco-dressed-as-Egypt for 1999's The Mummy, directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, and Arnold Vosloo.  Float along as the manatees discuss mummification hangovers, better ways to prevent resurrections, and yet another spec script!  Sam is sleepy and creates a band.  Ben gets mad about camels...

For our first 100% Ben-free episode, bat-fan Anthony (Batmanatee?  Fanatee?) has finally convinced Sam to watch 1989's Batman!  Directed by Tim Burton (with mandatory score by Danny Elfman) and starring Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, and Kim Basinger, Batman 1989 is arguably the movie that started the grim 90's superhero movie trend, and for that we owe it a lot.

For the spookiest month of the year (I guess?) the manatees are diving into halloween flippers-first with 1991's Ernest Scared Stupid. Do you guys remember Ernest? The character created by Jim Varney was ubiquitous during his heyday, appearing in ten movies, his own tv show, and dozens if not hundreds of commercials. And now, this podcast! Float along for insights into monster hunting, treehouse d...

The manatees finally start watching movies from this millennium with 2001's Evolution, directed by Ivan Reitman and starring David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Julianne Moore, and Seann William Scott. It doesn't super hold up, but, y'know, whatever. Ben rants about Evolution... and vaccines... and the shape of the earth. Sam theorizes about Seann William Scott's career trajectory. Both provide a tanta...

This month the manatees are checking out Brandon Lee's tragic last film, The Crow. Directed by Alex Proyas and starring Brandon Lee, Ernie Hudson, Bai Ling, Tony Todd, and featuring the triumphant return of Michael Wincott, the guy with the voice from Robin Hood! Discussion points include whether or not Shelley shoulda been the Crow, Sting (the wrestler, not the singer), alternate casting (Tommy W...

This month the manatees are revisiting 1997's The Fifth Element, directed by Luc Besson and starring Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich!  Ben and Anthony discuss age appropriate relationships, the logistics of murphy appliances, and the problem of too many Chris's to eventually solve that age old riddle: what do you mix with breath, sweat, sand, and matches to make lasers? (Hint: it's smoochin'.)  Co...

Redesignated simply "Zilla" by insulted fans of the series, Roland Emmerich's 1998 adaptation Godzilla stars Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, Maria Pitillo, and Jean Reno, and wishes it was Jurassic Park, which it very much is not. It is seventeen hours long and features several lizards. Fish! Boats! Simpsons voice actors! Guys named Jean! All of these things are in this movie. So. There's that?

We're doing 90s remakes of 30s pulps again! 1994's The Shadow directed by Russell Mulcahy and starring Alec Baldwin, is a strange, strange film. Join the manatees as they gush over Ian McKellen and Tim Curry's supporting roles, start suggesting edits almost from minute one, demonstrate an embarrassing lack of nuclear physics knowledge, and repeatedly struggle and fail to not call it The Phantom. W...

We're starting 2019 off with the moderately notorious 2001 summer blockbuster Tomb Raider! Starring Angelina Jolie and Daniel Craig a little bit. But is it really as bad as people say? (Hint: yeah.) Float along with us as we force ourselves to finish this movie and take frequent breaks to talk astronomy, dream houses, and virtually anything else we can come up with to not focus on this movie. ......

We're back on our vampire kick with 1994's classic(?) Interview With The Vampire, written by Anne Rice, directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, a young Kirsten Dunst, and Antonio Banderas for like a hot minute. As a free bonus, you'll also get the manatees' grim prediction of when the book series may have jumped the shark, Sam's long war with films' portrayal of piano playing,...

Quite possibly the most macho movie ever made, 1993's western Tombstone stars EVERYONE, including several stars we've seen on Matinee Manatees before. Tony has suspicions about lightning, Ben accidentally reveals what he looks for in a spouse, both gush over Doc Holliday, and everybody has a pretty good time. Float along with us to Arizona 1881 from the comfort of your own bed, listen from the beg...

1996's The Phantom is directed by Simon Wincer, stars Billy Zane, is widely reviled, and is actually awesome. We'll tell you how, and it's definitely not only because we're in love with Billy Zane. That's admittedly part of it, but. It's only... it's only about 80% because we're in love with Billy Zane. Float along with us for fun facts about the comics, embarrassing ignorance of basic geology, an...

Starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly, Jim Henson's 1986 classic Labyrinth holds a special place in a lot of 80s kids' hearts despite a rocky commercial release. But does it hold up to adults looking back? Float along and find out as we explore maze strategies, logic puzzles, and how many rock stars are actually in this movie. This one's a little less funny and more wistful than most, so fair...

As a fairly obvious attempt to replicate the success of 1997's Men In Black, 1999's Wild Wild West underperformed pretty dramatically.  But does it deserve its bad reputation?  To find out, the manatees get academic in one of our most informative episodes ever, revealing secrets of the universe like the physics of how magnets work, why Harry Potter will never be as good as Lord of the Rings (no ma...

Matinee Manatees is a year old, and to celebrate our 1st birthday, we're doing a super-sized three-host episode! (It's an experiment, we'll see how it goes.) We're hanging out with Joel Schumacher again for his infamous 1995 classic Batman Forever. Listen for tips on the best places to get recruited into a supervillain gang, advice on how to trick-or-treat properly, similarities between the Riddle...

We're back at it with the vampire thing! Joel Schumacher's famous/infamous The Lost Boys (starring Kiefer Southerland, Jason Patric, Dianne Wiest and BOTH COREYS) is both a huge influence on virtually every vampire movie that came after it AND possibly the most 80's thing we've ever seen. But is it any good? The manatees dive right in and ask the really tough questions, like: Are DVDs really bette...

1990's Gremlins 2: The New Batch is directed by Joe Dante, stars Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, and Haviland Morris, features Christopher Lee, Dick Miller, and Robert Picardo, and just might be among the best sequels ever made. On this there was no disagreement. Nervous about potentially boring the audience with a complete consensus, Ben attempts to manufacture conflict by announcing th...

This month was our very first patron request, and it's a good one! 2004's Mean Girls starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams was, for some of us, a very special movie... in that we'd heard most of its most memorable lines quoted at us long before actually seeing it. But how does this high school teenage comedy hold up to an adult audience? Actually, surprisingly well. Get in, losers, we're going...

For February, home of the most weirdly forced romantic holiday of the year, we watch one of the most weirdly forced romantic movies in recent memory: 2008's Twilight! Starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, Twilight was pretty obviously geared towards a different target audience, but we tried to give it a fair shake. Includes: practical advice for hiding immortality, the science behind Vamp...

Of all of the retellings of the Robin Hood legend, 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves starring Kevin Costner stands apart, though not necessarily for the best reasons. The manatees dive in to unravel the movie's many mysteries: castle maintenance, Morgan Freeman's magical powers, vanishing dogs, and Alan Rickman's starring role in a completely separate movie. Y'all remember this one?

Tony forces Ben to watch one of his favorites: 1989's Road House, featuring Sam Elliott but technically starring Patrick Swayze and Kelly Lynch. Road House reveals many things about the secret world of celebrity bouncers, such as how to tell if somebody is evil by whether they wear underwear, the variable lethality of knives, how not to run a protection racket, and the complete believability that...

For arguably the spookiest month of the year, the manatees watched the really-more-action-fantasy-than-horror movie Hellboy, directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, and Doug Jones. And, spoiler, they really liked it. Also in this episode: the manatees discuss casting picks for the Hellboy reboot (Aubrey Plaza for Liz!), Ben attempts to bully Sam for being a slightly d...