Now Playing - The Movie Review Podcast

Wedding Crashers Elsa Lanchester dons the most famous beehive hairdo in movie history to walk down the aisle with Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein. Can director James Whale marry his campy sense of humor with the unused parts of Mary Shelley’s darkly philosophical novel and create an even more outrageous 1935 sequel?  And will the Monster finally give a piece of his mind to the madman wh...

The Original Champion Bodybuilder Lightning has struck Now Playing in 2024, prompting Arnie, Stuart, and Jakob to have alive-ly debate about Frankenstein… starting with the Big Guy’s 1931 debut as a Universal Monster. Is Boris Karloff’s portrayal of an accidentally murderous reanimated corpse even more iconic than Bela Lugosi giving you the evil eye in his Dracula cape?  And how dramatically did d...

Spongebob No Chance Jason Mamoa does his best to salvage The Lost Kingdom of DC’s Justice League saga in this deep-sixed 2023 sequel to Aquaman. Is estranged brother Patrick Wilson better off in jail than helping crustaceans like Dolph Lundgren cockblock Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and his Black Trident? And how big a barnacle is Amber Heard after all her unflattering court appearances? Nicole Kidman ma...

Squid Games Alan Moore’s Watchmen disbanded in 1985, but their legacy lives on in a 2019 HBO miniseries where a Rorschach-inspired militia and the offspring of Ozymandias (Jeremy Irons) try to harness the power of Dr. Manhattan. Can Regina King (Jerry Maguire) prove both Black and Blue lives matter as her masked crime fighter works with Tim Blake Nelson, Don Johnson, and former Silk Spectre Jean S...

Christmas with the Cranks The walls are coming down on civilization’s last city as Patricia Clarkson (Green Mile) and her wicked scientists race the clock to extract The Death Cure from Maze Runner test subjects. How much blood will Dylan O”Brien have to spill to stop his infected friends Rosa Salazar and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Phineas & Ferb) from becoming rage virus zombies?  And is crank-y...

Here Comes The Hot Steppers  Dylan O’Brien and his Maze Runner friends leave the labyrinth only to find themselves navigating a charred landscape full of rage virus zombies in second chapter The Scorch Trials. Can Giancarlo Esposito (Mandalorian), Lili Taylor (Conjuring), and Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) offer these kids sanctuary from wicked scientists wanting to milk their brains? And woul...

Thinking Outside The Box  Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart survived the harrowing gladiator matches of The Hunger Games only to stumble into a labyrinth of dangers in the 2014 adventure The Maze Runner. Can Teen Wolf star Dylan O’Brien decode the secrets tucked within these giant granite walls, and find an escape path for a marooned tribe of teenage boys? Or will this flight to freedom be thwarted by an a...

The Town That Dreaded Markdowns Director Eli Roth (Hostel) has a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving now that a decades-long mission to expand his Grindhouse joke trailer has finally blessed the multiplex. Will holiday viewers be delighted to dine on a 17-year-old turkey overstuffed with gorey kills and T&A exploitation? Say a prayer for Arnie, Stuart, and Jakob as they gobble up this 202...

Charlie’s Bangles Brie Larson mixes it up for the sequel to her 2019 Captain Marvel debut by bringing estranged niece Teyonah Parris (WandaVision) and gushing fangirl Iman Vellani (Ms Marvel) into her 2023 Marvels adventure.  Can the trio stop trading places long enough to thwart a hammer-wielding Kree (Zawe Ashton) from disrupting the Skrull peace negotiations?  And have the years Sam Jackson spe...

It’s Not Easy Being Green  Sam Jackson returns from the far corners of the cosmos to help extra-terrestrial bud Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) stop a Secret Invasion of Earth by shape-shifting Skrulls. Are White House envoy Don Cheadle and MI-6 agent Olivia Colman smart to discount the aged Avenger after he broke his promise to find these radicalized aliens a new planet to inhabit? And is Nick Fury keepin...

Choke-E-Cheese and the Riflefire Explosion Security guard Josh Hutcherson (Hunger Games) spends Five Nights At Freddy’s looking for the reason why his younger brother went missing back in the 1980s. Could the animatronic mascots of this condemned pizzeria be at the center of a string of unsolved child abductions? And will his socially awkward little sister be the next victim after having a sleepov...

The Coyote of Wall Street Martin Scorsese is back with longtime acting muses Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro in the 2023 Oscar hopeful Killers of The Flower Moon. This time Leo is the taxi driver, chauffeuring Lily Gladstone around Oklahoma as uncle Bobby conspires with an entire town to fleece her Osage tribe out of oil profits. Can Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad) get the FBI to stop this wave o...

Can God be Love if He lets such awful things air on network television? Ron Perlman (Hellboy) is the Tak of the Town after his attempt to become the next Pennywise in the 2006 Stephen King effort Desperation. Will the possessed policeman ticket motorists Tom Skerritt (Dead Zone), Steven Weber (The Shining), Matt Frewer (The Stand), and Henry Thomas (Doctor Sleep) for driving past a cursed Arizona...

Sometimes dead is better than straight-to-streaming  Look what the cat dragged into Paramount Plus: a 2023 prequel to Stephen King’s beloved 1983 novel Pet Sematary.  Long before the infamous Indian burial site brought back dead pets and run over children as flesh-eating zombies, grieving father David Duchovny dug a hole to reanimate the son he lost in Vietnam. Can longtime resident Judson Crandal...

See saw with a seesaw Saw is back, as is series star Tobin Bell as “Jigsaw” John Kramer. In this film, set mere weeks after the events in the original Saw, Kramer travels to Mexico seeking a cure for his brain tumor. Instead, what he finds is a scam that leads him back to his old “Jigsaw” ways with all new traps. Will this movie suck out your eyeballs with its violence and gore? Or do you need to...

I Know What You Did Last Century The Phantom Killer returns to Texarkana nearly 70 years after first turning a quaint community into The Town That Dreaded Sundown.  But could the original culprit still be alive, uncaught, and wielding razor sharp band instruments in 2014? Or are these copycat slayings the handiwork of a disgruntled great-grandson, or demented fan of the 1976 Charles Pierce cult mo...

Texarkana becomes The Town That Dreaded Sundown after a psycho with a sack over his head starts terrorizing couples necking in secluded makeout spots. Can Oscar-winning Ranger Ben Johnson (Last Picture Show) expect to lead the largest manhunt in US history to this Phantom Killer if his klutzy driver can’t even keep the patrol car on the twisty gravel backroads?  And did Dawn Wells survive three se...

A Hard Habit To Break  Valak continues to spread the evil of The Conjuring Universe throughout the churches of Europe in the 2023 sequel The Nun II. Can Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) return her nemesis to Hell with Father Burke out of the picture, and faithless bad girl Storm Reid (Euphoria) her only frIend? And will this demon in a wimple actually learn a thing or two about throwing shade from mo...

Law & Order: MCU Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) sees her dreams of headlining a fun lawyer show get contaminated after cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) accidentally turns her into She-Hulk. Does being a giant green hothead help the Attorney At Law win high profile cases for celebrity clients like Megan Thee Stallion and Abomination (Tim Roth)?  Or will the super-prosecutor be con...

A college dropout’s devotion to a PlayStation racing simulator unexpectedly paves the way for his career as a professional sports car driver in the incredible true story Gran Turismo. Is Lord of the Rings star Orlando Bloom still living in a fantasy world by thinking this homebody gamer is Team Nissan’s best shot at winning the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans? And can coach David Harbour (Stranger...

A recent college graduate (Cobra Kai’s Xolo Mariduena) goes looking for work that will keep a roof over his family’s heads, and scores a lifetime appointment as Blue Beetle. Can DC’s first Latino crimefighter satisfy audiences tired of fascists like Batman dominating the box office, and hungry for superhero flicks equipped with George Lopez jokes? And is Susan Sarandon totally buggin’ to think she...

As if vampires are the worst thing you’d encounter on a cruise ship. Dracula had to find dry land before he could start sucking London dry in Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel, which means sailing for a month on the doomed Last Voyage of The Demeter.  Will onboard medic Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton) go down with the ship before he solves the mystery of why so many crew members sport holes...

Fanboy producer Seth Rogan brings Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Rafael back to big screens to frolic in the radioactive green ooze that first transformed them into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 40 years ago. Should the foursome heed the warnings of rodent mentor Splinter (Jackie Chan) to stay hidden from humans in the sewer? Or answer the call of cub reporter April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) to...

16-year-old cosplayer Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) fulfills her ambition to be like idol Brie Larson after she straps on her great-grandmother’s magic bracelet, and becomes Ms. Marvel in a 2022 Disney+ miniseries. Can the fledgling superhero heal generational trauma dating back to Pakistan’s split from India by stopping supernatural family members from opening The Veil of Noor, and wiping out life o...

Prison guard Tom Hanks walks the condemned down The Green Mile to the electric chair for a living, but takes a different path after meeting magical healer Michael Clarke Duncan (Armageddon) behind bars. Was a jury in Depression Era Louisiana blinded by racial prejudice when they convicted the enormous black man of brutally murdering angelic white twins?  And does director Frank Darabont get the sa...