Now Playing - The Movie Review Podcast

The Dondus 2028 presidential campaign begins now Director Ridley Scott returns to the arena where he won Best Picture a quarter century ago in the hopes that his 2024 epic Gladiator 2 will entertain a new generation. Does tyro Paul Mescal honor Russel Crowe’s legacy by kicking up dirt with raging baboons, rhinos, and sharks?  And can slavemaster Denzel Washington help the rising Coliseum star make...

Mad “Max” Before Thunderdome Russell Crowe avenges his family’s execution by turning the Gladiator games of ancient Rome into a rematch with murderous Emperor Joaquin Phoenix (Joker). But can the outcast general survive an arena full of unchained tigers and beefcake competitors by maximizing his celebrity with the roaring crowd and mobilizing fellow slaves like Djimon Honsou (Amistad) into a new a...

My Big Fit Greek Wenham Sullivan Stapleton (TV’s Strike Back) aims to turn the sacrifice of 300 Spartans into The Rise of An Empire in this 2014 continuation of Frank Miller’s comic book vision. But will his dream of a unified Greece get undone by bad girl Eva Green (Casino Royale), who proves to be the real power behind Persian God-King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro)? Or will widow Lena Headey and sole...

This is Sparta?  Because it kinda looks like a place you’d put a dollar in his g-string. Gerard Butler leads 300 Spartans to a glorious seaside death in Zack Snyder’s blockbuster adaptation of a graphic novel by Frank Miller (Sin City). But did the Greek King bring his wartime problems on himself by literally killing the messenger and using racist and homophobic insults to taunt Persian rival Xerx...

Would you dream of reading 300 pages about the actor who played Freddy? This year the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise turns 40 years old, and Now Playing host Arnie has been celebrating all month by revisiting the classic slasher series. As part of that personal retrospective he has read and reviewed Freddy Krueger star Robert Englund's 2009 autobiography:  Hollywood Monster: A Walk Down Elm Str...

Knull in Void Tom Hardy has a Last Dance with his shadow self Venom as the symbiotic pair hot step across the country evading Chewitel Ejiofer (Serenity) and alien enthusiast Juno Temple (Ted Lasso) in the trilogy’s 2024 conclusion. Is there something extra about the black ooze E.T. that makes him a target for both the US military and imprisoned space elf Andy Serkis?  And are the bickering fugiti...

Bad To The Lucky Bone Who is The Crooked Man who dares to make a Hellboy sequel without Ron Perlman, Guillermo del Toro, or even David Harbour?  Why it’s creator Mike Mignola, bringing his original comic book vision of the character to the screen for the first time!  But did the titular phantom steal all the coins from the production budget, leaving new star Jack Kesy (Baywatch) looking red from e...

The Lost Boys Stephen King’s 1975 vampire novel Salem’s Lot won’t stay dead, coming back for a fourth time as a 2024 feature film exclusively on Max. So why did the studio lock this new effort from producer James Wan (The Conjuring) and writer/director Gary Dauberman (It Chapters 1 & 2) in a crypt for three years before exposing it to the light of day? And would they have more luck changing th...

Born This Way Joaquin Phoenix indulges in a Folie A Deux (aka “Madness of Two”) by restaging the Joker sequel as a musical duet with psycho fangirl Lady Gaga. Will the jury in his high-profile murder trial plug their ears once this incarcerated clown starts singing his defense in full makeup?  Or can lawyer Catherine Keener (Get Out) convince them that Arthur Fleck suffers from multiple personalit...

I’d still take 8 years of civil war over 8 hours at the DMV Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka) attempts to mend her broken family and America’s political divide in a post-apocalyptic Demilitarized Zone (aka DMZ) formerly known as Manhattan. Can she break the influence that tyrannical baby daddy Benjamin Bratt (Catwoman) has on their graffiti artist son Freddy Miyares (When They See Us) by backing political r...

Roll Models The story of Autobots and Decepticons begins with the 2024 animated epic Transformers One. What makes lowly miner droid Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) so optimistic that he will find the Matrix of Leadership and lead his cog-less peers to a new destiny on the surface of Cybertron?  And how does his friendship with bestie Brian Tyree Henry (Into The Spider-Verse) transform into such a bitt...

The Silence of the Low Men Stephen King tries his hand at touching coming-of-age drama with the 2001 adaptation of Hearts In Atlantis. So why are the Now Playing Podcast hosts so terrified by the stranger danger posed to 11-year-old Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) by neighbor Anthony Hopkins? Is single mother Hope Davis (American Splendor) smart to leave her son unsupervised with this supernatural tenan...

”I’m Ready for My Close-Up, Mr. Murnau” The silent movie Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror may be a counterfeit version of Dracula, but it boasts the most authentic undead performance in cinema history, according to Shadow of the Vampire. Has director John Malkovich made a pact with the devil by casting actual bloodsucker Willem Dafoe as his lead actor?  And will co-stars Catherine McCormack (Braveh...

Little Miss Sunset Six kidnappers abduct Abigail in a get-rich-quick scheme that backfires once they realize the wee ballerina is Dracula’s Daughter. Can ex-junkie Melissa Berrera (Scream), bad cop Dan Stevens (Legion), hacker Kathryn Newton (Quantumania), wheelman Angus Cloud (Euphoria), muscle Kevin Durand (Locke & Key), and sniper William Catlett (Black Lightning) find a way out of this bab...

My Body, Main Course Will it be another cannibal holocaust for tweeting college activists after their 2015 plane ride crashes into the very same Green Inferno that Ruggero Deodato documented in his notorious 1980 found footage shocker?  Director Eli Roth (Thanksgiving) certainly isn’t letting these social justice warriors off any hooks or impaling sharp objects as they attempt to live-stream a sta...

No Animals Weren’t Harmed In The Making Of This Movie Four documentary filmmakers disappear into the “green inferno” of the Amazon rainforest and end up the main dish in a Cannibal Holocaust. But will the recovered footage of their final moments in the jungle actually prove that modern-day Americans are the real savages?  And why is porn star Robert Kerman the only one arguing that snuff films sho...

Custodians of the Galaxy Cate Blanchett steps away from her Oscar bait prestige pictures to go vault hunting with fellow Academy Award winner Jamie Lee Curtis in a s***hole adaptation of Borderlands. Is Barbie tyke Ariana Greenblatt the key to opening up this blockbuster video game franchise to mass movie audiences accustomed to a less filthy Pandora planet?  And will funnyman Kevin Hart get short...

Echidna not, we’re back in the Now Playing Arcade Those schmucks Stuart, Justin, and Arnie tried taking an extended break from video game movies but are finally ready to knuckle down and review the hit Sonic The Hedgehog miniseries that broke Paramount Plus streaming records in 2024. Can Idris Elba punch his way into the hardened hearts of the hosts as he trains klutzy deputy Adam Paley to crush t...

At last, we get the live-action remake of Fox and the Hound. Ryan Reynolds makes a big gambit to save the MCU from the Phase Four doldrums by reviving Hugh Jackman and the rest of 20th Century Fox’s stable of discarded superheroes for a 2024 blowout. But will Disney prune Deadpool & Wolverine from the sacred timeline once the vulgar assassin and his cranky man crush start letting blood and R-r...

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatheads Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) might shoot fireworks into tornadoes for free on YouTube, but Universal Pictures insists that storm chasers return to the big screen to enjoy the 2024 sequel Twisters. Does sensitive scientist Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where The Crawdads Sing) have the solution to taming these lethal cyclones? Or are her sidekicks Anthony “Hamilton” Ramos...

Funnel of Love Bill Paxton (Aliens) and Helen Hunt (TV’s Mad About You) rekindle their whirlwind romance as they tail tornadoes across Oklahoma in the 1996 blockbuster Twister. Will rival storm chaser Cary Elwes (Princess Bride) rain on their parade by being the first to test new technology that sees inside a cyclone?  And does this unlikely marriage between Speed director Jan de Bont, Jurassic Pa...

My Heart Will Go On (but my franchise won’t) Sandra Bullock does her best to keep a Caribbean vacation liner afloat after leech-covered psycho Willem Dafoe wires her boat to Speed 2 collision with an oil tanker in this infamous 1997 sequel. Does director Jan De Bont jump a shark trying to engage Cruise Control and sail this doomed voyage into familiar commercial waters?  And did the mega-expensive...

Uneasy Riders Keanu Reeves has to keep the Speed of a Los Angeles city bus above 50 mph, or he’ll set off another bomb planted by madman Dennis Hopper in the surprise blockbuster of Summer 1994. Should passenger Sandra Bullock be trusted to take the wheel and avoid all the oncoming gridlock and freeway construction when she can’t keep her eyes off her hunky co-star?  And how did this modestly budg...

The Cane Mutiny Stephen King turned ABC-TV into the Weather Channel with his three-night prime-time event: Storm of the Century. But record snowfall and gale-force winds are just a tempest in a teapot compared to the destruction caused by Colm Feore (Thor) upon arrival on a quaint Maine island. Can Tim Daly stop the future Frost Giant from terrorizing his community with more success than Wings co-...

A Tree Grows On Brosnan Pierce Brosnan retires from James Bond duties to write books for Stephen King in the 2011 cable miniseries Bag of Bones. But is the ghost haunting his New England cottage his recently killed wife (Haunting of Hill House’s Annabeth Gish), or a blues singer (Dreamgirls’ Anika Noni Rose) still cursing locals for wrongs received back in the 1930s? And does Mick Garris (The Stan...