Now Playing - The Movie Review Podcast

Businesswoman Gwenyth Paltrow comes into contact with a novel virus. Now can an all-star cast stop her Contagion from spreading worldwide? And why does Matt Damon have a "Borne" immunity? Now Playing’s Viral Outbreak Retrospective reaches its dramatic conclusion with a podcast review of Steven Soderbergh’s sprawling, newly relevant 2011 medical thriller. Join Arnie, Stuart, and Jakob as they analy...

The Andromeda Strain has mutated again!  Michael Crichton’s landmark 1969 novel came back in 2008 as a two-night TV mini-series produced by Ridley and Tony Scott!  But is this cast of sitcom stars - including Eric McCormack (Will & Grace), Ricky Schroder (Silver Spoons), Christa Miller (Scrubs), and Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) - capable of selling the science to a cable television audi...

The 1990s gets a whole lot grungier after an infected African monkey is smuggled into Northern California, and causes a deadly Outbreak.  Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo star as divorcing virologists tasked with flattening the curve of a super-Ebola before nervous military brass Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland opt to level the hot zone and everyone inside with jetfire.  Find out if Stuart, Arni...

Gag me with a spoon! Those glow-in-the-dark boils under your eyes aren’t just an ‘80s fashion statement, but a Warning Sign that your local agro-research lab is cooking up more than genetically modified food. Before he kept Law & Order on television, sheriff Sam Waterston shot it out with enraged scientists infected with Borna disease in this fourth installment of the Now Playing Viral Outbrea...

A whole new kind of sickness struck the 1970s with the release of The Andromeda Strain. Four scientists hunker down in a top secret lab to study the space plague inadvertently brought to Earth by a fallen satellite. Can they find a cure for the killer alien bug before politicians use nukes to inoculate the planet? And will this first film adaptation of Michael Crichton’s bestseller develop a fatal...

Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers help folks see the lighter side of apocalypse with their 1964 Cold War classic Dr. Strangelove. What happens when a paranoid general (Sterling Hayden) decides to protect American bodily fluids by ordering fighter pilot Slim Pickens to drop 50 megaton bombs on unsuspecting Soviet targets? Can George C. Scott and a Nazi scientist convince the US President there’s an...

Pandemic movies infect the Swingin’ Sixties courtesy of The Satan Bug - a 1965 spy caper that becomes the second installment of Now Playing’s Viral Outbreak Retrospective. TV star George Maharis (Route 66) attempted to be an epidemiological James Bond when he slipped on an isolation suit, and hunted down the reclusive billionaire who broke into a top secret bioweapons lab to release a highly letha...

Finding yourself indoors with plenty of time to catch up on movies?  Avoid the Panic in the Streets, and join Stuart, Arnie, and Jakob as they analyze Hollywood portrayals of pandemics through the ages with a topical Viral Outbreak Retrospective. The seven part series begins in 1950 with an Oscar-winning film noir classic directed by Elia Kazan (On The Waterfront).  Can public health official Rich...

No one was playing Dungeon Siege in 2014, much less joining Uwe Boll on his Last Mission to make a respectable fantasy film out of the role playing video game. Prison Break star Dominic Purcell discovers his tattoos can now open portals to ancient Bulgaria. Is the modern day assassin much help to two Ehb princesses out to overthrow a traitorous king and his fire-breathing dragon?  Or should he aim...

Dolph!  Uwe! What happens when Two World Heavyweight movie punchlines unite for one epically bad sequel to fantasy flop In The Name of the King?  Lundgren stars as the unlikely son of Jason Statham, called from modern day Vancouver to wage war on a witch and her cannibal army in the medieval land of Ehb. Chosen Ones Justin, Stuart, and Arnie command you to fulfill the prophecy, take another drink...

What In The Name of The King is Uwe Boll up to now?!  Someone gave the notoriously awful director $60 million to turn video game Dungeon Siege into a wannabe Lord of the Rings. He’s even convinced Jason Statham to star as a martial-arts wielding peasant caught between goodfella magician Ray Liotta and a royally miscast Burt Reynolds in the battle to be crowned Worst Supporting Actor. Will Arnie ha...

Justin, Stuart, and Arnie invite listeners to another dimension, where fighting games made for the high end Neo Geo 24 bit system become major movie events! Can The King of Fighters at least claim victory over those flop film adaptations of Street Fighter, Double Dragon, and Tekken? Ray Park (aka Darth Maul) has stolen three legendary artifacts that enable him to turn a friendly martial arts tourn...

Legendary Pictures was definitely chasing Avengers money when they hired Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), and Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) to coerce big ape Kong to join a MonsterVerse superteam. But they might have more luck winning the Vietnam War than lasting three days on Skull Island with bonkers POW John C Reilly and a nest of subterranean, flesh-eating lizards. Be glad y...

Lord of the Rings mastermind Peter Jackson emerged from Middle Earth with enough box office clout and Oscar statues to get any movie made he wanted. So why reteam with Gollum (aka Andy Serkis), and send huckster Jack Black, loverboy Adrien Brody, and new blonde Naomi Watts on an expedition to resurrect King Kong in 2005? Find out if their trip to Skull Island needs to be the length of a Tolkein ep...

Sega has taken company mascot Sonic The Hedgehog to the next level with a brand new live-action feature. That means Arnie, Justin, and Stuart are racing back to the Now Playing Arcade to cover all the twists and loop-de-loops this video game icon has traveled on the road to this CGI makeover. Will the Blue Devil win over Red State America as he makes rural Montana his home?  And is he running ring...

Time to find out who the real Harley Quinn is! Margot Robbie emancipates herself from that less-than-fantabulous group of metahumans known as Suicide Squad to fly with new crew Birds of Prey. Does a teen pickpocket, salty cop, ass-kicking lounge singer, and crossbow killer offer Harley the same level of protection as Jared Leto’s Joker? Or can Gotham villains like Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) separa...

Does the thought of a well-endowed female gorilla make your heart pump a little faster? One supersized simian is certainly warm to Lady Kong’s form - picking himself up from the broken pavement after his 1976 tumble from the World Trade Center, and continuing on in the 1986 sequel King Kong Lives. Is Linda Hamilton proud to oversee the birth of another miracle baby two years after delivering John...

Long before she became a fixture on American Horror Story, Jessica Lange practiced her screaming skills as the aspiring actress abducted by King Kong in a colorful 1976 remake. Is the big ape willing to play second banana to Jeff Bridges, as a primate paleontologist also falling for the buxom blonde?  And can oil executive Charles Grodon strike it rich by putting Kong on tour, after Skull Island p...

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence declare themselves Bad Boys For Life as they relaunch the irreverent action franchise that made them box office titans a quarter century ago. But did Miami detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett make a bargain with God, or sell their souls, when they retired director Michael Bay, and joined a SWAT team of squeaky clean Millennials who defer all the dangerous work...

America wanted their big gorilla back for a popular Saturday morning cartoon, but King Kong Escapes for one last Japanese adventure. Villainous Dr. Who (no relation to the BBC Timelord) needs the legendary ape’s help in mining the North Pole of a rare mineral. Can a Bond babe and kidnapped nurse seduce Kong into dirtying his paws?  Or will the beast find it impossible to dig alongside a robotical...

Don’t panic! King Kong has broken free of his American handlers and heads to Japan for fisticuffs with local lizard Godzilla.  Should Arnie, Stuart, and Jakob drop a nuke on these two iconic monsters to stop them from soiling their cinematic reputations?  Or did the big ape need this childish, man-in-rubber-suit cage match to make him relevant 30 years after his embarrassing tumble from the Empire...

Now Playing has one last podcast for 2019, dedicated to all those dirty birdies who love the oogy mind of Stephen King. Writer Paul Sheldon (James Caan) finds himself in Misery after he’s pulled from a car crash in snowy Colorado, and tortured by a demented fan who demands a new chapter for the romance novel heroine he retired. Did Kathy Bates deserve the Oscar for her tough love bedside manner? ...

The Emperor Strikes Back!  Zombie Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) steps from the shadows with secrets that could force last Jedi Rey (Daisy Ridley) to turn to the Dark Side and bad boy Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). But General Leia (Carrie Fisher) is committed to using every last ounce of her Old War star power to squash this Final Order, and pave the way for The Rise of Skywalker. Find out how much resistanc...

‘Twas the night of Black Christmas, and all through Blumhouse, strange creatures in hoodies, sought coeds to roust.  But the remake has armed all the women with care, in the hopes it’s the bros’ turn to finally be scared. Now Arnie!  Now Stuart! Now Brock to their boots, head off to the theater to watch Imogen Poots. Will this boys-vs-girls showdown get social media chatter?  Or will militant femi...

Life is tough for the Son of Kong. Everyone expects him to follow in his father’s massive footsteps, and scale the box office heights of the first film. But this quickie sequel has different monkey business in mind as it sends scandalized movie director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) back to Skull Island for romantic hijinks with an orphaned circus performer.  Will they - or Now Playing hosts Jako...