Reel Deep Dive

Run Lola Run has a pretty straightforward premise: The titular character needs to acquire 100,000 Deutschmarks in twenty minutes in order to keep her boyfriend from getting killed by the mob. She seems to be stuck in a Groundhog Day-styled time loop until she can manage to accomplish this feat. The film itself is as lean, propulsive, and tightly-edited as that premise implies. That being said, Run...

Being a movie nerd podcast where movie nerds talk about movie nerd stuff, it was probably inevitable for Reel Deep Dive to do an episode about the Star Wars saga at some point. On the other hand, it's a bit less expected for this program to go with a minor, disposable TV movie centering on the cosmic teddy bears for its maiden outing in this particular franchise. Ryan is joined on this episode by...

One of the landmarks of cinema, Fritz Lang's Metropolis is a 1927 German Expressionist science fiction drama about a huge, futuristic city where the wealthy live a life of decadent privilege on top of the backs of the struggling masses. Freder, its main protagonist, is shaken from his complacency by the ethereally-beautiful labor organizer Maria and her revelations about the cruelty found in the l...

Producer/director Roger Corman is arguably the biggest name in the wide, varied landscape of cinematic schlock. His massive catalog, including 55 films he directed and at least 385 he produced, ranges from Little Shop of Horrors (1960) to Sharktopus (2010). Corman was also something of a cinematic kingmaker; James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Sylvester Stallone, Marti...

Writer and television producer Rod Serling attained his status as a 20th century pop culture icon due to The Twilight Zone, the sci-fi anthology program that he created, oversaw, narrated, and frequently scripted from 1959-1964. That show has made Serling an impressively enduring figure in the ever-shifting landscape of American media, but it's not the only anthology show that he curated. We're go...

In the interest of keeping his guests engaged (and broadening his horizons beyond the stuff he's already interested in), Ryan likes to alternate the choosing of Reel Deep Dive's subjects. The consequence of this policy is that Toby, Ryan's nine year old nephew, chose the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film as the focus of this week's episode. Ryan had little interest in deconstructing this film (or even...

One of the most beloved comedies of the silent era, Sherlock Jr. is a brisk, economically-edited film whose layers belie its short running time. Over the course of 45 minutes, Sherlock Jr. functions as a platform for madcap slapstick, a showcase for ludicrously-dangerous stunts, an opportunity to show off trick photography, a conduit for relatable physical acting, and plenty more. Ryan is joined b...

Change is constant, but Hollywood was in an especially volatile position of flux in the late 60's and early 70's. The prestige musical, one of the most reliable moneymaking formats in filmmaking from the Depression onward, had crashed and burned with the failures of Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Hello Dolly (1969). Suddenly, the dependable formulas weren't working anymore.   This period saw film...

So far, every conversational topic in an episode of Reel Deep Dive has centered on a single film. In the hopes of shaking things up, Ryan and Rachel are breaking down two cinematic spins on the Bard's famous romantic comedy. The first one is Kenneth Branagh's 1993 effort starring Emma Thompson, Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton, Kate Beckinsale, Denzel Washington, and Robert Sean Leonard. The other sub...

The interconnected web of Marvel Studios films is easily the most successful movie franchise of the 21st century. Naturally, it's impossible  for something this massive to get along without drawing some detractors. 2017's Thor: Ragnarok is one of the earliest Marvel films to conscientiously reflect some of the common criticisms leveled against its predecessors (bland color grading, boring mus...

Reel Deep Dive starts commenting on television with this episode, a discussion about an MTV cartoon that built up a significant cult audience after its cancellation. While the program did launch the careers of noted directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, it's still best-known for its intriguing concept involving a high school filled with teenage clones of historical figures. Ryan and Rachel f...

Most box office duds fade to obscurity once their underperforming theatrical runs have concluded, but a lucky handful stumble into positive reappraisal and a lengthy post-release afterlife. The most prominent example is arguably Frank Capra's 1946 Christmas perennial It's A Wonderful Life, but a number of other films earned enduring cult status once the advent of cable television spurred numerous...

Any podcast devoted to movie nerd minutiae is obligated to talk about Alfred Hitchcock at some point. In addition to that, a podcast devoted to movie nerd minutiae is probably also required to touch upon auteur theory during its existence. Reel Deep Dive has decided to kill two birds with one stone by focusing on Rope, arguably the Hitchcock film with the most precise, distinct, and meticulous sce...

Parody lies at the bedrock of human expression. People have been poking fun at genre tropes ever since the first genre trope calcified into being. With that in mind, it's useful to mention that parody will still be a novel concept to the next generation. For many, Teen Titans Go! has served as their introduction to the burlesque, winking lampoon. In fact, Teen Titans Go! was many a child's first f...

There aren't many films that can be credited with creating an entire subgenre, but Airplane! certainly qualifies. It's difficult to imagine what the past four decades of parody films would've been like if this weird little lampoon hadn't been as big of a hit as it was. Airplane! turned the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team into a cottage industry and it completely changed the career trajectory of charac...

While it feels impossible to imagine this in a world where Disney is currently a cultural monopoly, the House of Mouse was once in such dire straits that it was seriously considering the prospect of permanently shutting down production of its animated films. Instead, the studio put out The Little Mermaid (1989), a lower-budgeted and story-focused effort whose success put Disney back on the map. Th...

Star Trek is one of Rachel's core fandoms, so it was really only a matter of time before Reel Deep Dive handled a film in this long-running franchise. Rachel chose Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, a film often seen as one of the weaker entries in the saga. Both Rachel and Ryan think that it's actually a pretty solid movie, so one of the discussion points is why Search For Spock is dismissed as...

At some point, American media decided that there was only two idioms for the field of animation... 1. Family-friendly product derived from the Disney formula. 2. Raunchy, sophomoric material that serves as a counterpoint to Disney formula. Fantastic Planet, produced in France and Czechoslovakia, doesn't fit into either of those idioms. Instead, it's a thoughtful, meditative, and psychedelic parabl...

It's Rachel's turn to pick the subject and she went with Baz Luhrmann's gaudy take on the big-budget musical. Moulin Rouge was a big favorite of Rachel's during her adolescence and it remains a solid "comfort movie" that she puts on whenever she's bored or tired or just wants to have something familiar playing in the background. Join Ryan and Rachel as they probe this film, a product that audience...

Hollywood has been consistently producing James Bond movies for almost sixty years at this point. And, while the early installments were a bold new voice in the filmmaking landscape, the franchise stopped innovating after 1964 and has been appropriating whatever happened to be popular in contemporary action cinema since 1973. While every movie is a reflection of the world that created it, the 007...

Ronald Reagan's ascension to the American presidency led to a wave of deregulatory practices that remains lauded (and imitated) by conservatives to the present day. Among these practices was the repeal of FCC protocols that prevented children's programming from engaging in direct marketing. This led to a slew of cartoons that were thinly-veiled toy commercials for the impressionable youth of the 8...

So far, Ryan's been running things on Reel Deep Dive. He picks the subject, writes up the talking points for the episode, guides the structure of the discussion, and even writes the descriptive captions for this page (he feels weird while writing about himself in the third person). This episode, centered upon Satoshi Kon's psychological horror anime Perfect Blue, changes that dynamic. Rachel picke...

On occasion, it's impossible to definitively state why a certain film has clung to our collective memory. This is not the case with The X From Outer Space; people remember this movie because its titular kaiju is a cosmic chicken monster. That being conceded, The X From Outer Space still has a curious legacy that's worth exploring. What motivated the venerated Shochiku Studios to try its hand at ma...

Our last episode focused on The Broadway Melody, the film that established MGM as the foremost producer of movie musicals. This episode centers upon Easter Parade, a film created in the midst of numerous box-office juggernauts from MGM's song-and-dance crew. At this point, the shaky, uncertain structure of The Broadway Melody had long since been polished into a slick, consistent, and crowd-pleasin...

The Broadway Melody is arguably the first movie musical; its success kicked off decades of ever-more-elaborate musicals from MGM. The Broadway Melody was also the first sound movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It spawned four (sorta) sequels and a remake. One of its songs ("You Were Meant For Me") has been performed by everyone from Bing Crosby to Gene Kelly to Sting. So, considering...