The Arts Hole

In this Romcom Season edition of Masters & Disasters we're talking literal and figurative shitshows as we unpick what went wrong with 2018's gender-swapped 'Overboard' whilst dealing with a real life plumbing emergency!  We're diving into two screwball romcoms built on a dodgy gaslighting premise - 1987's 'Overboard' starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell and 2018's bilingual, interracial, gender s...

In a change to the romcom schedule we're releasing this bonus Patreon episode where, well, there's no easy way to say this - we've fallen headfirst into Dean Cain's Arts Hole and it isn't pretty. If you're a child of the 90s you may be thinking what has this beloved superhero actor been up to since 'Lois & Clark: New Adventures of Superman'? The answer involves talking animals, upsetting political...

 With Valentine's Day fast approaching, we start looking at romantic movies with "I Give It A Year," an ambitious but unsuccessful British anti-romcom.    SHOW NOTES: Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) laments his broken marriage in "The Naked Gun" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5OQMoSCrqw     Once again for newbies, an explanation of the Bechdel Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test    ...

 Luke loses his Sex and the City virginity as we take a look at SATC TV reboot 'And Just Like That...'  It's been ten years since Carrie last chugged a Cosmo on our screens and now she's back, from outerspace, she just walked in to find us here with a... confused look on our faces... What have the gang been up to? Is there still sex in that city and where, oh where, is Samantha?    SHOW NOTES:  Th...

 Thomasin McKenzie plays Anya Taylor-Joy in the sixties, except she doesn't because it's now, except when it isn't, and there are ghosts, but not really. Which might explain why at least one of the characters is played by Dr. Who.   Confused? Screenwriters Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns seem like they were. We do our best to unpick the aesthetically beautiful and creatively hollow 'Last Nig...

Christian Slater has the heart of a baboon - or does he?! - in this bizarre ape-themed romantic drama from 1993. Bea half remembers this from an old VHS tape and Luke has questions...seriously, 90s movies gave us some weird ideas about 'romance'.    SHOW NOTES:  Our friend Adam and his excellent rock'n'roll furniture business, Broken Neck: https://brokenneck.co.uk/shop/empire-2-lamp/    Become a p...

James Cameron's 2009 mega blockbuster was once the most successful film of all time. How has it faded from view so quickly? A film with this many blue CGI cat people should never be so forgettable...   SHOW NOTES:  Once again, our oft-used "Community" clip about whether Nicolas Cage is good or not. It's weird how often this crops up... https://youtu.be/F1XCUo_Uu8M   Hana Shams Riazuddin's article...

An end of year / start of year episode in which we answer some questions, make some recommendations, look back on the good and the bad of 2021 and make some predictions about the upcoming year.   Predictions are limited to movies, books and TV since the last time Luke predicted anything he accidentally started the Omicron variant. Sorry about that.    SHOW NOTES:  Our friend Adam and his excellent...

 A thirty year cinematic saga, telling the story of a slow-witted but kind-hearted boxer from the slums of Philadelphia, his wife, his brother in law, and then somehow Mr. T, a robot and a Russian giant. Strap in for a long, strange ride as we cover every Rocky movie.    SHOW NOTES:  The Movies Made Us Do It, co-hosted by Luke's friend Rich who crops up with some borrowed points:  https://podcasts...

 Christmas Bonus! Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes - the dream team of late eighties cinema - finally come together thirty years too late in a perfectly adequate Christmas movie. Dodgy Scots accents aside, and the fact that it's formulaic ay eff, it's... fine. Bea enjoyed it. Luke less so. Apologies to the people of Scotland for our terrible accents, although unlike Cary Elwes, we know that they're b...

One features the Wet Bandits and one is just a damp squib, despite the CGI pyrotechnics. In this special Christmas edition of Masters and Disasters we unpack why 1991's 'Home Alone' is a festive classic but this year's 'Home Sweet Home Alone' is definitely not sweet and best left alone. Child trafficking, OJ jokes, the institutional racism of American police - how is this movie not a beloved famil...

 Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito star in a Christmas comedy, which sounds like it should be formulaic but adequate.   Turns out it's one, but not the other.   Join us as we plumb the depths of a laugh-free and often surprisingly unpleasant holiday effort from one actor who everyone likes and another who killed two people.  SHOW NOTES:  Matthew Broderick's car crash - the actual one, not this mo...

Not Last Christmas but the Christmas before last, we watched the movie 'Last Christmas.' Two years later, we're still fuming...   In the season of goodwill, Bea came to this movie with high hopes of an irreverent, Christmas feminist romcom romp from Emma Thompson and Bryony Kimmings and those hopes were dashed, through the snow. And the terrible plotting.    Don't forget we are launching our free...

   It's not a feel-good tween movie, not yet a grown up drama. We take a look at the wreckage of Britney Spears' movie vehicle, kick the tyres, suck our teeth and tell you it's going to take a lot to get this thing running smoothly.  Filmed at the height of Britney's pop princess power, why did this road movie take her and the audience nowhere? Recorded in 2020, before the fallout from #FreeBritne...

In this episode, recorded in the depths of 2020, we re-litigate the famously awful action comedy starring Sly Stallone and Estelle Getty. One of them is a meddling old lady, and one of them is a tough cop!  It would have been a lot more interesting if the casting for those roles wasn't the way around you're thinking, but sadly, as with a lot of this film, things are done prosaically by the numbers...

Musical superstars Cher and Christina Aguilera team up for a gritty tale of addiction, revenge and corporate greed in this hard hitting, edge-of-your-seat thriller from 2008.  We're just kidding; it's glittery and fabulous and there are lots of campy dance numbers. It's also, as Luke is forced to admit, better than you might expect.    Recorded in 2020.   SHOW NOTES:  Todd in the Shadows video ess...

 Released in December of 1989, "Tango & Cash" was the last and most eighties of the eighties action movie trend. We do our best to explain a complex and meaningless plot, and try to fix a film that is at once brilliant and terrible in equal measure.   Originally recorded 2020.   SHOW NOTES: The scene in Jackie Chan's Police Story that VERY loosely inspired this movie's opening: https://www.youtube...

 Based on a movie based on a book based on a true story that was made up, "The Conjuring" is the latest iteration of the "Amityville Horror" legend. In this case, it's the story of a family who move into a haunted house. If that doesn't sound very original or interesting, maybe trust that instinct...    SHOW NOTES:   The surprisingly sweet "Poltergay" : https://www.amazon.com/Poltergay-English-Sub...

Because October is not all Pumpkins and fun sized Mars Bars, we wanted to honour Black History Month. Luke suggested getting a black guest, Bea pointed out that this gig in unpaid and that two white people asking someone black to work for free might have some awkward precedents. Instead, this week we take a quick tour through some of our favourite contemporary pieces of Black Art.      SHOW NOTES:...

 Second in our series about related projects, one which succeeds and one which doesn't. In this episode, it's Luke's pick, and he is comparing Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 sci-fi horror "Alien" with Ridley Scott's wanky 2017 prequel "Alien: Covenant."   SHOW NOTES: The crew of "Covenant" dressed as they think appropriate for first contact with an unknown world: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-...

 In 2009, movie studios took a gamble on the controversial idea that Megan Fox was attractive - which became their whole marketing strategy for a film that's actually a feminist-inflected horror comedy about a possessed cheerleader. Post #MeToo, the film has finally found an audience, but does it have the teeth of, say, "Teeth" ? Does it have the flavour of "Ginger Snaps" ? Is Megan Fox a "Promisi...

Ancient, malevolent, desiccated human remains with eerie power (Tom Cruise) get into a fight with some Egyptian chick. This was the movie that launched and then immediately sank Universal's "Dark Universe" project, for reasons that are painfully clear on screen.  SHOW NOTES:  Variety article on the problems with leaving a film under Cruise control: https://variety.com/2017/film/news/the-mummy-melt...

 First of a series comparing one great piece of work with a related, terrible piece of work. In this case, 1973's cult classic Brit Horror "The Wicker Man" versus 2006's shit horror "The Wicker Man," with Nicolas FREAKIN' CAGE! Oooooh. OOOOooooOOOh AAAAHHH! I'm a sexy cat... Show Notes:  Worst of The Wicker Man: https://youtu.be/e6i2WRreARo   Nicolas Cage explained: https://youtu.be/F1XCUo_Uu8M  

 In the spirit of celebrating the good as well as bashing the bad, and in the run up to Halloween, we take a break from criticising to talk about some of the scary movies that we love. Ten films each, plus wild cards and honourable mentions and, if we're honest, probably a fair bit of bending the rules and outright cheating. 

Now that the sexist battleground has quietened, we take a look at the 2016 all-girl Ghostbusters reboot, not to be confused with the upcoming all-children reboot, and presumably far ahead of 2025's inevitable all-dog effort, or Ghostbusters Vs. Predator, or whatever else they're going to do to resurrect a franchise that should probably be left to decay in peace...