The Kick

Have you ever found yourself out of a job? Dead criminal husband? Recently out of prison and looking for a quick payday? Well, gather up your girlfriends and rob a bank/gala/corrupt politician’s coffers! That’s the premise that links our three films today: “Widows,” “Set It Off” and “Ocean’s 8.” Aided by podcast favorite and Hollywood Reporter writer Ciara Wardlow, Chance and Noah break down the c...

What did you stream this weekend, partner? Well, the guys on Be Reel saddled up and saw the new Coen Bros movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an anthology film set upon a very Coen Bros frontier. We’ve got a singing sharp shooter, a mumbling and lucky-as-hell prospector, and a stagecoach bound for hell. Chance and Noah chat about what distinguishes a topflight Coen movie, our favorites from the f...

What connects indie comic book movie adaptations from the ‘90s and early ‘00s? Why they're all about demons, of course! Today, Chance and Noah dissect the gross, weird, often incoherent tendencies of 1994's "The Shadow", 1997's "Spawn" and 2004's "Hellboy" in a round-up of the lesser known Hollywood superheroes. Joining the guys to add superhero context is novelist Adam Nemett, whose debut WE CAN...

When the guys heard about Paul Dano's directorial debut, "Wildlife," they both admitted to pre-judging it as good-bad: a period piece, a troubled marriage, a child bearing witness to fighting. But much like the characters on screen, the film revealed itself to be much more nuanced than they had imagined. Today, we dive deep into this quiet Richard Ford adaptation and discuss the multitudes therein...

At these dark times (read: Halloween, not the burning hellscape of our democracy, come on!) we look to the “Prince of Darkness” himself for frights and insights into the state of horror. This week, Chance and Noah watch and review John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” “The Fog” and “The Thing.” We’re joined by Andy Crump and Niela Orr to unpack articles they wrote for The Hollywood Reporter and The Ringer...

Forget John Hughes and Freddie Prinze, Jr.! 2018 was a watershed year for high school movies as Hollywood has turned to best-selling YA novels to inform the future of "10 Things I Hate About You" and "Sixteen Candles." In this episode, Chance and Noah apply their maybe too lofty standards to "The Hate U Give," "Love, Simon" and "To All the Boys I've Loved Before." The guys break down all the racia...

In this special in-person episode recorded in a hotel room in Lincoln, Nebraska, Chance and Noah reunite to watch and review "A Star is Born." The guys discuss everything from the film's portrayal of pop music, what it means to be a songwriter, why the hell Dave Chappelle is in this movie, and how Bradley Cooper can play sweaty, drunk and sexy at the same time. While Chance believes this movie is...

It's not easy building a musical narrative from the pieces of one artist's catalogue. That's one thing Chance and Noah learned this week when they reviewed three jukebox musical movies: "Mamma Mia," "Rock of Ages," and "Across The Universe." In experiencing cinematic delivery systems for ABBA, The Beatles, and the worst of '80s rock, your hosts gained a little appreciation for the jukebox musical...

If you're looking for a late-summer/early-fall adventure, might we suggest NOT taking a rafting trip? Ample evidence of why rafting is a terrible idea is provided by classic river pictures "Deliverance" (1972), "The River Wild" (1994) and "Without a Paddle" (2004). Even if you have enough river savvy to navigate the white water of the Gauntlet or the burning marijuana fields of Oregon, you're defi...

In this pseudo-mini pod (oops, it's long!) Chance and Noah watch and discuss the end of summer's biggest hit, "Crazy Rich Asians." It's the first major Hollywood movie to feature an all-Asian cast in 25 years, and your hosts are on hand to unpack its romantic comedy tropes, its visions of excess and cultural specificity, and to pick out some favorite players from this giant cast. While attempting...

Ba da. Ba da. Bum bum bum bum bum. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the movies, Hollywood (and China) releases a new shark picture—and it commands the summer box office! Chance and Noah use this as an opportunity (as if they needed a better reason) to talk Sharks that Aren’t “Jaws” one more time: this summer’s "The Meg", "Open Water" (2003) and Johannes Roberts’ "47 Meters Down” (20...

In today's mini-episode, Chance talks to veteran documentarian Rachel Dretzin about her new film "Far From The Tree." They discuss her surprisingly close collaboration with bestselling author Andrew Solomon and how to be ethically curious when interviewing people with disabilities. "Far From The Tree" opens this weekend in select cities.

What’s more impressive: that Tom Cruise is still making Mission: Impossible movies into his 50s or that Chance and Noah recorded 100 episodes of Be Reel? Feels like a toss-up, and reviewing all six MIs is our chosen victory lap. Inspired by the current box office hit, “Fallout”, Chance and Noah look to the Brian de Palma origins of the franchise, the John Woo growing pains, and the JJ Abrams-ifica...

In this special prelude to our Mission: Impossible super show, Chance calls up Sheryl Oh. The Film School Rejects writer breaks down the character development and camera work that together make "Fallout" a new high point in the MI franchise. Then, Chance and Sheryl look backward at "Mission Impossible" and "MI2" and wonder when this series shifted genres. Read Sheryl's "Fallout" piece here: https:...

Do you ever stop and look at a New Yorker cartoon or a sardonic comic book and wonder, "Huh! I wonder what sort of deviant mind would create this"? Lucky for you, dear listener, there are at least three movies about such people--one fiction, two biopics. This week, with the release of Gus Van Sant's "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot" (about the late John Callahan), Chance and Noah look at mov...

Oh, dads! They love things like the great outdoors and mansplaining political movements. But where does one draw the line between normal dad and egomaniac, survivalist dad? Does your father rant about consumerism or the coming nuclear holocaust? Does he ship your family off to the jungle to act out a colonialist fantasy? On this episode of Be Reel, Chance and Noah look at movies about wild dads an...

Friends of the podcast and dear listeners, welcome to the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom mini pod! The park is gone and the characters’ basic desires have been totally rewritten, but that won’t stop Universal from releasing another unholy beast of a movie for our viewing pleasure. Come along as Chance and Noah dissect how this movie fits (or doesn’t) into the JP Universe, as well as the new sci-fi...

It was Ben Franklin or George Bernard Shaw or someone who said, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." Luckily, this also happens to be a Be Reel tailor-made genre! On today's show, Chance and Noah review "Tag," "Game Night" and the classic "Clue" as we look at adults refusing to grow out of their childlike need to play games. As it happens, this genre is...

Boredom, boldness and a proper mark — those are the three ingredients shared by today's category of "American" criminal films. It matters not if it's New York in the '70s or a sleepy college campus in 2004; flying too close to the sun for that big score is apparently a national pastime. We start the episode in the true crime realm with a discussion of the new film "American Animals" and the dramat...

Sequels are so 20th century; in the 21st, we supposedly want origin stories. Starting with the relative disappointment that is Disney's new "Solo: A Star Wars Story," Chance and Noah look at other more or less successful prequels: "Red Dragon" (prequel to "Silence of the Lambs") and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (prequel to the Harry Potter films). The guys pick apart what makes these...

A couple 4/20's ago, we spent a day on the couch with the genre of Cult Weed Movies ("How High," "Bongwater," etc.), but today our chosen stoner movies are on a mission, maybe to nowhere. In this week's episode, we unpack the wild and circuitous journeys of some unlikely high heroes. “Inherent Vice” is groovy and insane (5:00), “Dude, Where’s My Car?” is the featherweight sci-fi prequel to “The Ha...

Here's the story, of guys watching movies, and these movies are all linked around a theme. All of them are about adaptions, of TV series, about families with a dream. It's a podcast, where Chance made Noah, watch three TV Land movies on his own. They were weird and, without context, maybe didn't stand alone. 'Til the one day Chance and Noah were recording, and they knew it was much more than a hun...

You don’t get to a couple hundred listeners without making a few social media observations. On this episode, Chance and Noah collect all their likes and reposts and subtweets to analyze how terrifying being online can be. Through "Ingrid Goes West" (6:15), "Unfriended" (39:55), and "The Social Network" (52:10), they look at the thin line between follower and stalker, trend and obsession, and frien...

Bret Easton Ellis is a writer, commentator and real-life character almost too easily defined by the word "problematic." The quintessentially '80s novelist who struck a cultural chord with his borderline-nihilistic tales of excess, perversion and violence has aged into a fascinating person to do a podcast about. This week, Noah and Chance drop in on the most famous three films adapted from Easton E...

It's this year's unexpected horror smash... but is "A Quiet Place" actually good-good? Is the cinematic ingenuity of this pseudo-indie picture enough to overcome some Cloverfield-level world-building? Chance and Noah break down the hokey premise (sound aliens), potentially pro-life politics (or lack thereof), and whether Jim from "The Office" could be a believable father even without a beard in th...