Rotten Rewind

SUBSCRIBE NOW for early access and exclusive bonus episodes at WWW.PATREON.COM/ROTTENREWIND History might tell you that the Cold War ended in the late 80s, but it actually ended in 1985 when Sylvester Stallone directed the fourth installment of the "Rocky" franchise and sent the braindead American hero to Soviet Russia to avenge his best friend's death. Today on the podcast, we continue our descen...

SUBSCRIBE NOW for early access and exclusive bonus episodes at WWW.PATREON.COM/ROTTENREWIND "When it started, America was just a handful of scrawny colonies. Now, it's the most buff, pumped-up country on the planet." - Daniel Lugo To celebrate the most buff, pumped-up country on the planet, Rotten Rewind is kicking off our most epic miniseries to date. For the next 6 months, we'll be asking listen...

If you've ever been a bartender, you've heard of Tom Cruise's "Cocktail." You've probably even seen it. Since it's release 34 years ago, the film has become something of a bartender's rite of passage. It's also so much darker than you'd ever think the movie where Tom Cruise flips bottles at a TGIF's would be. For our second installment in our Rotten retrospective on Cruise, we're looking back at 1...

After two months of global destruction, dystopian wastelands and the divorced dads that will do anything to protect their stacked daughters, we say goodbye to our ROTTEN APOCALYPSE miniseries. For our grand finale, we're looking back at one of the most notorious disasters of the 20th century and an underrated late career banger from one of our best directors. First up, it's the infamous 1995 flop...

Pamela Anderson as a bounty hunter who impales nazis with the heel of her stilettos. Ice-T as the leader of a rebel group of half kangaroo men. A Courtney Love produced soundtrack featuring Björk and Face to Face. Lori Petty headlining an MGM-produced adaptation of a cult comic book series. Things that could have only existed in the mid-90s. For the seventh installment of our ROTTEN APOCALYPSE ser...

"Despite what you may have heard, Armageddon is a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color, and shape—and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosion." -- Jeanine Basinger, in her essay on Michael Bay's 1998 "Armageddon." if this podcast was made for one director, it would be Michael Bay . for the second installment in our “rotten apocalypse” series, we’re cel...

over 35 years before denis villeneuve successfully brought frank herbert's landmark sci-fi novel to the big screen, david lynch entered the pantheon of notorious box office bombs with his own attempt at adapting the famously "unadaptable" classic. with the 2022 oscars finally upon us and denis villeneuve's "dune" more than certain to take home the most awards of the evening, we wanted to take a tr...

if there's one win you can count on next weekend at the oscars, it's jane campion becoming only the third woman in nearly 100 years to win best director. in honor of this depressing statistic and campion's legendary 35 year career, we're looking back at two of her biggest critical misfires that aren't the misunderstood masterpiece "in the cut." first up, it's campion's 1996 follow-up to her oscar-...

for the next three weeks, we're showing love to some of this years oscar nominees and looking back at some of their biggest critical and financial misfires. this week, two of this years best actor nominees (and two of the biggest stars on the planet) go head to head in a pair of movies that would have crushed in the 90s. first up, it's 2 time academy award winner and 3 time podcast MVP denzel wash...

When Roger Ebert gave Tom Green's unhinged feature debut "Freddy Got Fingered" a rare zero star review, he famously said "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." He added "The day may come when "Freddy Got Fingered" i...

For the penultimate episode in our Comedy in the 2000s miniseries, we're diving into the rotten filmography of one of the biggest comedic superstars of the decade: Jack Black . First up, it's the unhinged 2001 buddy/revenge comedy "Saving Silverman" wherein Black co-stars alongside Steve Zahn as two thirds of a Neil Diamond cover band that kidnap their best friend's ( Jason Biggs ) manipulative gi...

DuJour means friendship. DuJour means family. DuJour means seatbelts. And most importantly, DuJour means podcast. Illustrator and graphic designer Ella Talkin joins us this week to discuss a pair of early 2000s feminist comedies that updated their respective properties to the candy-colored MTV era of filmmaking. First up, it's the millennial sleepover classic and pop culture satire, "Josie and the...

Our Comedy in the 2000s retrospective wouldn't be complete without a healthy dose of transphobia and lighthearted racism! This week on the podcast, we're taking on a pair of stoner comedies that defined the decade's obsession with buddy comedies steeped in gay panic. First up it's "Dude, Where's My Car?" featuring a pre-" Punk'd" Ashton Kutcher and pre- "Bulletproof Monk" Seann William Scott as a...

For the second installment of Rotten Comedy in the 2000s, we're checking in with two of the biggest comedy heavyweights of their generation. After dominating comedy in the 90s, Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey were riding high and cashing in on their blank checks in the new millennium. First up, it's the Farrely Brothers follow-up to the massively successful "There's Something About Mary," where the di...

We’re still steeped in 2000s nostalgia here at the podcast as we kick off our seven week retrospective on comedy in the aughts. An era that began with an overflow of post- "There's Something About Mary" gross-out comedy before transitioning into frat-bro antics in the wake of movies like " Old School" and " Wedding Crashers," before the reign of Apatow exploded in the latter half of the decade wit...

Halloween weekend is finally upon us, which means our five week descent into Horror in the 2000s has come to a close. We couldn’t think of a better way to wrap up our miniseries than by checking in on what two of Hollywood’s most prolific boogeymen were up to at the turn of the millennium. Actor Morgan Maher returns to the podcast to discuss 2001’s notoriously bad 10th installment in the “Friday t...

The slasher sub-genre was revitalized in 1996 with Wes Craven’s “Scream,” ushering in a whole new era of self-aware slasher films steeped in irony. By the early 2000s though, the genre was on life support yet again. Today, we’re taking a look back at some of the last of the WB -approved era of slasher films with two campy horror flicks that come so, so close to satirizing the genre as “Scream” did...

While torture porn and hard-R reboots of 70s classics were capturing the mood of the Bush-era, the PG-13 horror movie was still thriving throughout the 2000s. After the success of M. Night Shyamalan at the turn of the century, as well as the emergence of Americanized J-horror adaptations throughout the aughts, studios began churning out PG-13 thrillers that were lighter on gore and gratuitous nudi...

“I don’t change my style for anybody. Pussies do that.” - Michael Bay This week on the show, we close out our four week retrospective on post-9/11 cinema with what might be the most American film ever made: Michael Bay's "Bad Boys 2." A movie that not only reinvigorated director Michael Bay after his failed attempt to make a more classical wartime romance with “Pearl Harbor,” but also inadvertentl...

When discussing the pantheon of the best actor/director collaborations in film, you rarely hear about Denzel Washington and Tony Scott . From 1995 until Scott's untimely death in 2012, the pair worked together on five of the best action films of the 90s and 2000s. While Denzel is one of our most beloved and acclaimed movie stars, Scott long lived in the shadow of his brother, Ridley, mostly writte...

It’s been 20 years since 9/11 and for this monumental anniversary, we’re paying tribute to two of America’s bravest soldiers: Xander Cage and Bob Lee Swagger. For this jam-packed, very special episode of Rotten Rewind in the 2000s, we’re joined by actor/writer/Swagger Head Morgan Phillips, as well as cinematographer and our in-house 9/11 specialist, Jake Ures, to look back on the cinematic landsca...

We’re kicking off our monster-sized 2000s Retrospective with what might be the most notorious critical and financial bomb of the decade: Martin Brest’s accidental swan song and the film that might have single-handedly ended the first iteration of Bennifer , “Gigli.” A sensationally weird miscalculation of epic proportions, “Gigli” is the worst film you’ve probably never seen. So, does “Gigli” live...

The tumultuous career of Lindsay Lohan has experienced some of the highest high's and lowest "Loh's" of any young actor we've seen. This week on the show, we're looking back on some of the more pivotal Loh's in Lohan's career: the notoriously rotten "I Know Who Killed Me" and her 2013 soft-comeback, "The Canyons." We're thrilled to be joined again by Olivia Willke, who has come on to defend these...

Hollywood filmmaking peaked in 1993 when actor turned director Tony Bill and stuntman Tom Sierchio teamed up to give America the love story they had been waiting for since the birth of cinema: one in which a small town waitress with terrible taste in men settles for the mentally impaired dishwasher with the heart of a baboon who follows her home and watches her sleep. That’s right, there is a real...

M. Night Shyamalan has had one of the most fascinating, unexpected career trajectories of our lifetime. Over the course of twenty years, Shyamalan has garned Academy Award nominations and billions in global box office while being hailed as the next Spielberg before nearly being laughed out of Hollywood after a series of critical and financial flops. In the last several years, Shyamalan has been ex...