Now Playing - The Movie Review Podcast

He’s the DJ, I’m the Slapper Oscar viewers might’ve turned on Will Smith, but Martin Lawrence is still Ride Or Die for 2022’s Best Actor winner as the long-time co-stars head into a fourth Bad Boys adventure together. Can the Miami cops clear the name of dearly departed captain Joe Pantoliano (Matrix) after he’s linked to drug cartel money?  And is this duo ready for retirement now that eternal pl...

The Scribe Who Loved Me Henry Cavill may never get to be 007, but he’s tailor-made for a stylish 2024 Kingsman spin-off from Matthew Vaughn. Is his literary superspy Argylle a stunningly accurate predictor of real-life geo-political events, or merely the invention of lovelorn novelist Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World)?  And what happens when man-in-chair Sam Rockwell lets the cat out of the bag...

We Don’t Need Another Hardy Director George Miller crafts the fifth installment of his Mad Max Saga into an origin story for one-armed trucker Furiosa. Anya Taylor-Joy (Queen’s Gambit) takes the wheel from Charlize Theron to guide audiences from her green homeworld of Many Mothers to the sandy turf wars between Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and new baddie Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). But is it wise fo...

Killers Of the Woodpecking Loon Alaqua Cox leaves New York City to reinvent herself as a Native American superhero, but that won’t stop her bad deeds in Hawkeye from coming back on her like an Echo. Can Maya Lopez restore honor to her Choctaw ancestors by baiting her abusive surrogate father, Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), into a rematch on Oklahoma home soil?  And does the deaf character’s preferen...

The End of the Road Danny Glover might be too old for Lethal Weapon, but he’s still hip enough to monetize Death Race 4, a new generation turning to the Dark Web for pay-per-view entertainment. But should gambler Danny Trejo bet on longshot action star Zach McGowan (Agents of SHIELD) to outmaneuver champion driver Frankenstein on this new prison roadway?  And does Beyond Anarchy go beyond the craz...

Ford Vs Kalahari Convict Luke Goss hits a speed bump on his road to freedom after Death Race 3 relocates the masked driver and his pit crew to a perilous African penitentiary. Can mechanic Danny Trejo pimp Frankenstein’s Mustang so that it withstands the sweltering Inferno of the desert, makes it through sandy terrain and hostile shantytowns, and beats ten other well-armed vehicles to the finish l...

The Gangrene Mile Long before Jason Statham strapped on a metal mask and drove a monstrous Mustang around a penitentiary track, bank robber Luke Goss (Hellboy 2) got fans of reality TV bloodsport revving their engines in the 2011 prequel Death Race 2. But do CEO Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) and femme fatale producer Lauren Cohen (Walking Dead) have enough money in their streaming budget to turn shan...

It’s the end of the World as we know it…  … but host Stuart feels fine about wrapping up his six-podcast exploration of Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction saga with a look at the final novel, Chapterhouse Dune. Is the Bene Gesserit homeworld the perfect place to restart a worm farm after the wicked Honored Matres destroyed the original Arrakis deserts? Find out if the beef between the two most p...

The Ride of Frankenstein Jason Statham and Tyrese hone their Fast & Furious driving skills as director Paul WS Anderson (Resident Evil) reinstates Roger Corman’s campy bloodsport Death Race as a grim 2008 prison flick. Can a pit crew run by Ian McShane (Deadwood) help a wrongly convicted auto racer stay alive for all three days of the obstacle course, and get revenge on the villain actually re...

Make America Race Again Roger Corman re-stages his cinematic Death Race a half-century after ruling the drive-ins of the 1970s. But can new Frankenstein Manu Bennett (The Hobbit) keep pace with his 2050 competition, which includes a pugilistic pop star, a religious zealot from Texas, a genetically altered himbo, and an AI-powered driverless car?  And does the fascism of Chairman Malcolm McDowell (...

Road Kill Bill  David Carradine risks life and limb to become the most celebrated driver of Death Race 2000.  But does this automotive Frankenstein actually score more points with peace-loving rebels once he starts mowing down the folks responsible for this freeway carnage and avoids hitting women and children crossing the post-apocalyptic streets? And how much mileage do Sylvester Stallone (a yea...

How many licked Titans does it take to get to the center of Hollow Earth? Rebecca Hall (Iron Man 3) and her Monarch scientists know it’s a bad idea to bring together Godzilla x Kong after their 2021 showdown. But somebody has got to stop a giant ape named Skar King and his captive ice dragon, Shimo, from creating a New Empire that freezes out humanity. Can Titan veterinarian Dan Stevens (Downton A...

The Comeback of the Original Spice Girls  Stuart is back airing his blasphemous opinions about Frank Herbert’s Dune-verse with a podcast review of fifth installment Heretics of Dune,  Things have gotten Scattered in the time since the wormy God Emperor left the throne. Find out how a new generation of Bene Gesserit and Atreides descendants are faring on the rebranded desert planet. Listen Now!

Call Me By Your Mouse Emperor Christopher Walken and Harkonnen hardasses Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Austin Butler (Elvis) are ready to turn the page on House Atreides as Part 2 of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation gets underway. Can vengeful Timothee Chalamet worm his way into the heart of cynical Zendaya, and convince the indigenous people of Arrakis to follow their messiah into...

NYPD Blue Balls  Eight months before starring as Al Bundy on Married… With Children, Ed O’Neill tried to keep pace with Gene Hackman in a TV spin-off of French Connection. Did NBC execs cancel this potential 1986 series because gruff narcotics detective Popeye Doyle was still murdering folks and violating civil liberties like it’s 1971?  Or is the bigger problem that a future sitcom shoe salesman...

He’s strong til the finish, cause he eats his spinach (and stopped shooting heroin), he’s Popeye the Jailer Man! Gene Hackman crosses the pond to catch The Frog that avoided capture during a big time U.S. drug bust in the 1975 sequel French Connection II. But will it be any easier to find Fernando Rey on his home turf when the New York cop doesn’t speak the language and Marseilles police don’t con...

Sadly, not the same Frog who hooked you up with a Rainbow Connection Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist) pioneers ‘70s buddy cop formula with his five-time Oscar-winning breakout film The French Connection. Has all that foot-picking in Poughkeepsie prepared crass New York City cops Gene Hackman (Superman) and Roy Scheider (Jaws) for the amount of legwork required to catch heroin smuggler Fern...

The sleeper has awakened.     Stuart invites readers and sci-fi fans to follow him inside the wormhole once more, as he renews his mission to cover Frank Herbert’s entire Dune literary saga. Find out what happens to Paul Atreides and his family after the movies stop, and son Leto II is proclaimed God Emperor of Dune in the pages of a mind-expanding fourth novel. Things get spicy when you Listen No...

Closing Time Tom Hiddleston keeps on slippin’ slippin’ into the future (as well as 19th Century Chicago) in the concluding season of his Disney+ series Loki. Can Oscar winner Ke Huy Quon stop the Norse God from glitching everywhere all at once by making dramatic repairs to the space loom that weaves time together? And will Jonathan Majors remain an ongoing MCU presence after being convicted of off...

Insects & The City Dakota Johnson is clairvoyant EMT Madame Web, the only one who sees a future for marginal Spider-Man characters starring in their own Sony features. Can the fashionista paramedic protect a trio of teenage girls, including Sydney Sweeney (White Lotus), from toxic “ceiling guy” Tahar Rahim? And does the presence of Adam Scott (Severance) in this ambulance mean the actress is l...

The Kingdom of the Club Girl Skulls While under house arrest, Shia LaBeouf looks out Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and finds more than meets the eye to David Morse (Green Mile) in the 2007 thriller Disturbia. But can the Transformers star find the physical proof that women are going missing next door if his ankle bracelet always rats out his location to Detective Viola Davis?  And is mom Carrie-A...

DePalma Does Hollywood Director Brian DePalma (Carrie) reopens Rear Window 30 years later to give struggling actor Craig Wasson (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3) a peek at murder in the Hollywood Hills. Is the beautiful woman on the other end of his telescope the victim of a Peeping Tom killer wielding an oversized drill? Or is working girl Melanie Griffith playing a cruel prank on a man who likes to...

The Dog Who Knew Too Much Photojournalist Jimmy Stewart breaks his leg in the line of duty and winds up stuck at the Rear Window of his Greenwich Village apartment, suspecting a neighbor of murder. But did his camera lens actually capture Perry Mason star Raymond Burr in the act of chopping up his wife? Or is the injured Peeping Tom merely projecting his marital anxieties about Grace Kelly onto an...

Trading Places Boris Karloff’s Universal Monster was thought dead but emerges from a scorching sulfuric bath looking like Lon Chaney Jr in the 1942 sequel Ghost of Frankenstein. Should this reanimated giant leave his besieged castle to hook up with a distantly related brain surgeon capable of ending his homicidal impulses?  And would the creature be better swapping his criminal brain with the cran...

Well, that’s one way to break a hung jury! Boris Karloff ends his run as a Universal Monster by getting the Son of Frankenstein to perfect the electrical waves powering his reanimated body. But can the operation be considered a success if the green guy continues to leave a trail of corpses in his wake? And has Bela Lugosi become the real monster of the franchise as new assistant Ygor, despite doin...