Mildly Pleased

Merry Hanksmas! So… the last movie in our Hanksgiving trilogy of episodes took us a little longer to finish. Some of this could be due to how long Cloud Atlas (and the movie we reviewed before it) is, and some of it could be due to the fact that we’re just not very good at […]

Hanksgiving continues with what might be Tom Hanks’ longest movie (don’t quote me on that), The Green Mile. We dive into its Steven King origins and how director Frank Darabont has been one of King’s more successful adaptors, even if he can’t seem to get a movie made these days. We also have a little […]

Happy Hanksgiving, everyone! That’s right. Throughout the month of November, we’ll exclusively be reviewing Tom Hanks movies on The Pick, since why not spend some time with America’s Dad before you’re forced to do the same with your own family in a few weeks? We start things off with The ‘Burbs, a movie that came […]

Well, it finally happened. We’ve finally arrived at the release of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune, a film we’ve been waiting for ever since the three of us (plus Matt Carstens) did a Dune book club during the early days of the pandemic and then did an episode of The Pick talking about the book […]

Ohhh! Marone! It may be Shocktober, but there’s still nothing scarier than a mob hit. This week we’re talking about the big screen return (that kinda ended up being a small screen return due to streaming) of The Sopranos. We take a trip back to Jersey with The Many Saints of Newark by reminiscing a […]

With Venom: Let There Be Carnage hitting theaters this week, we’re taking a look back at the original film, the rare case of a superhero movie that we all basically just ignored. It’s hard to say whether Venom convinced us to see this new installment, but at the very least it gives us a reason […]

We just wanna have some kicks, we just wanna get some clicks! This week, in honor of the return of school that accompanies any September, we’re enrolling at Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. Coming from the same blog/podcast feed that hosted a show called Rokk Talk, we can’t help but get into talking about the […]

Another week has gone by and Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings is once again at the top of the U.S. box office. Who knew that releasing a Marvel movie in theaters without the option of streaming could actually make you a bunch of money? While touching on Shang-Chi a bit in this […]

Don’t say his name 5 times, but feel free to listen to this podcast 5 times (you know, in case you miss some of the nuances). In lieu of the Candyman remake that came out last week, we’re taking a look at the original 1992 film while also offering a few thoughts on how the two […]

As another strange Summer comes to a close, we take a trip to Italy by talking about 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. We do a bit of a deep dive into the many past (and future) adaptations of author Patricia Highsmith’s most famous creation as well as a brief look at Highsmith’s career. This conversation […]

We’ve reassembled the squad for the first episode of The Pick of 2021! Hopefully this will be another fun and fruitful run of episodes that will see us continue to do what we do best — forcing each other to watch movies and then talk about them. This episode sees us diving into a recent […]

And we’re back with our first podcast in quite some time! Just as the NFL draft happens each Spring, a far more important draft also happens this time each year, where we pick what movies we’ll be reviewing for Criterion Month. Like every year, it’s an odd exercise in talking about movies we haven’t seen […]

2020 was a weird year for movies, to put it mildly. 2021 will most likely be just as weird, as we look forward to films that will mostly be available on streaming while still holding out hope that a few choice releases will make their way to theaters by the end of the year. While […]

2020 was a year that was anything but mildly pleasing, but nonetheless, we return once again to our yearly podcast celebrating excellence in pretty good-ness. Despite all the tragedy and chaos last year, there were still plenty of things that didn’t make us sad, but also weren’t necessarily great enough to get us out of […]

We close out the year and this season of The Pick with what may be a harbinger of what to expect in 2021: Wonder Woman 1984. The first of Warner Bros' slate of new releases (plus or minus Legendary Entertainment) to be made available immediately on HBO Max, is this the beginning of the end for movie theaters? Or is it merely the start of another weird year? Plus, why do so many people already hate...

Well, I hope anyone reading this had as nice a holidays as anyone can have under the circumstances. This week we’re doing double duty (despite the fact that we should probably be taking it easy) by reviewing both Paddington and Paddington 2. We all thought these might be holiday movies going into them, though they’re […]

Due to the recent passing of Sean Connery, this week we’re talking about The Rock, one of his more ridiculous (and more entertaining) movies. We ponder whether this is Michael Bay’s best film as well as all of the director’s various trademarks that are usually obnoxious and bad, but actually work pretty well here. We […]

The election may be over, but we could still be heading toward a disastrous future in which only a muscley, tank-topped Channing Tatum can save us. Still, whatever the future holds, we can all agree we’ll be having a much more normal president in two months, and White House Down is a suitable, mind-numbing way […]

Well, we’ve just about reached the end of Shocktober, which also means we’ve reached the end of our string of Halloween-themed picks. With Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we go out with a movie that’s… memorable, at the very least. Much like last week’s look at Bram Stoker’s Dracula, we dive a bit into the fact that […]

Good evening! Or morning or afternoon or whenever you choose to read this. This week we dive into the sensual exploration of imagination that is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. John also gives us a bit of background on Bram Stoker, author of the vampire novel that’s inspired countless films and books about history’s favorite bloodsuckers. We […]

You may have been stuck inside the past 8 months with your roommate, family, or significant other, but chances are that it hasn’t been as bad as being stuck in a house with Baby Jane Hudson. This week we tackle the 1962 psycho-biddy classic Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? while delving into the famous feud […]

The ice is gonna break on this episode of The Pick! As this episode makes clear, we’d really like it if this line from the 1983 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone became a classic movie line. So what better way for that to happen than more people being aware of this movie? It […]

There’s absolutely nothing interesting going on in the news right now, so why don’t you treat your ears to a couple of friends talking about sexy teen vampires? In addition to the vampires, the boys spend a lot of time talking about the sweaty sax man that you can never unsee after watching The Lost […]

The Pick is back with Back To School! After an extended summer break, the boys return to Mildly Pleased’s flagship podcast to talk about movies. Unfortunately, this summer was not exactly the greatest summer for movies (did anyone actually end up seeing Tenet?), but at least there are always plenty of films from the past […]

Just as John wraps up talking about his favorite horror movies of the 2010s, we take a trip to the more distant past by making our Criterion Picks. As you may or may not know, each July we at Mildly Pleased review 30-ish movies from the Criterion Collection on the blog, and while many things […]