The Magnificently Huge Podcast

It’s our Ultimate 80s ‘Copter Throwdown! The premise is simple: Who would win in a fight between Blue Thunder and Airwolf? The answer is more difficult, especially if you have no idea what Blue Thunder or Airwolf are. Just know that back in the early 1980’s, movies and TV shows had a fascination with super-advanced tech applied to cars, trucks, planes, trains, motorcycles, and, yes…. Helicopters!...

Nicolas Cage… the man, the myth, the actor… man! He’s got a rep for bringing the crazy, and for being in a boatload of dreck in the past 12-ish years to pay the bills. But he’s also damn good in just about everything he’s ever been in, never phones it in no matter what. We break it down by era, from early-Cage favorites to the post-Oscar late-90s action blockbusters and into the straight-to-video...

What do Citizen Kane, Buckaroo Banzai, Risky Business and Ready Player One all have in common? If you read the title of this podcast you probably guessed that they’re all tangentially related to War of the Worlds! Join the MagHuge crew as we revisit the second Steven Spielberg / Tom Cruise effectstravaganza that no one asked for. This time from 2005. Yes, the very creaky Victorian-era sci-fi novel...

Die Hard (1988) is an action movie classic, on that we all agree. Its success created an entirely new sub-genre that is still being aped today - something we’ve dubbed “Die Hard in a Whatever.” Baddies take over a confined space (building, bus, plane, mall, city, etc) but fail to account for a rogue everyman on the loose who is intent on foiling their plans and saving an estranged loved one in the...

In our ongoing series of movies from the early 2000’s that Brian had never seen, we’ve got the solid directorial debut of Joe Cornish from 2011 - Attack the Block. It’s an alien invasion movie set in a council estate in South London, with a bunch of kids fighting off space monsters run amok for 90 minutes. And it is flippin’ great! It’s the movie that put John Boyega on the map before all that Sta...

What do Francis Ford Coppola, Roger Corman, Yellowstone, Dungeons & Dragons, and Duran Duran have in common? Other than they’re all discussed on this episode, absolutely nothing! This week we dig into the obscure 1963 schlock horror film that launched Coppola’s career: “Dementia 13”. Good luck to us all. 3:30 - Duran Duran (live) 16:45 - Yellowstone (Peacock) 21:20 - Poker Face (Peacock) 24:00 - T...

Ahoy, maties, and ARRRRRRRRRR! It’s our look back at arguably the best movie ever made based on a theme park ride… Walt Disney’s 2003 popcorner, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. And hey, it’s turning 20, so there’s also that! Honestly, this movie is pure fun, and we still can’t decipher how that is even possible for a movie based on a very niche Disneyland ride. But there it...

“You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he's a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.” ― George Carlin 5:30 - The Other Two (seasons 2 and 3) 9:00 - Seal and The Buggles (live) 13:30 - New trailers...

Streaming movies are dead. Don’t believe me? To prove it, we decided to each pick our favorite new streaming service film - and we all rolled snake eyes. At least we have a theory why. What’s that theory? Well duh, that’s why you need to listen to the show! 3:20 - NYT The Ballad of Deep Fake Drake (podcast) 9:25 - Stanley Cup playoffs 14:30 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) 22:40 - Direct to...

Does anyone remember the 1990 Bill Murray comedy called Quick Change? Because if you speak to any casual film-watcher about it, they’ll just ask “what’s that?” For the uninitiated, Quick Change is a reasonably funny, if imperfect, heist comedy that Bill Murray made in between Ghostbusters 2 and What About Bob? He produced and co-directed it, to boot, which makes it sort of a vanity project. Plus,...

For some reason Brian, the guy who goes to all the new movies all the time, also has some inexcusable holes in his cinematic history. This week we rectify yet another of his oversights as we use the show to get him to see 2012’s Dredd, starring Karl Urban. 6:10 - The Mandalorian (Season 3) 9:40 - Star Trek and Klingons 12:30 - Picard (Season 3) 17:55 - Renfield (2023) 23:00 - Dredd (2012)

This week we look at movies you would not believe aren’t based on comic books. They have all of the color, all of the action, but they’re ORIGINAL for Christ’s sake. What a novel idea! 3:15 - Trump Indictment 10:35 - Weird History Food (YouTube) 17:35 - Muse and Evanescence (Live) 23:30 - Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) 29:1 5 - The Mandalorian (Season 3, Disney+) 36:30 - Movies N...

Movies based on TV shows weren’t really a big thing until they got supercharged in the 90’s, once studios ran out of ideas. That’s the whole magilla this go-round. From movies that were continuations of a popular series, to faithful re-creations that hewed to the original, to the ironic comedies that had some fun… we got it all right here in this podcast. Literally dozens of shows and movies pulle...

The 90s were a time of burnout, nihilism, and everything else we love about 20-something GenX. In that spirit, we present another mid-90s cyberpunk downer in the form of Strange Days, starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Lewis and Angela Bassett. Jack in (or whatever your preferred type of jack may be) and join us reliving bad memories of a movie where people relive other people’s bad memories! 4:00 -...

Our big dumb exploration of Frat Pack Cinema of the 2000's continues with a look back at the '04 sports-comedy classic, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a wacky dodgeball movie starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller…but really, why would you? Easily one of our top picks from the Naughty Aughties, this is one that shouldn't work but ends up out-classing most...

In 1986, Sylvester Stallone was arguably the biggest star on the planet. Rocky, Rambo, Rhinestone… well, forget Rhinestone, but those other two killed it at the box office. So how to follow that kind of iconic success? Why not make an ultraviolet cop movie with good ol’ Cannon Films called Cobra? It’s an unbelievably mindless and blatant riff on the better (if equally proto-fascist) Dirty Harry ab...

How do you start an intro about a band like the great and powerful DEVO? Like that. Just like that. Like what I just did right there. Once you get through that though, you need to talk about how they’re the inspiration behind so much techno, punk rock, art rock, and just smart assery of Generation X. If you’ve never listened to anything other than their one enormous hit, let us introduce you to th...

What if Robert Downey Jr, Sally Field, Elizabeth Shue, Whoopi Goldberg, Carrie Fisher, and Kevin Kline made a movie and everyone forgot it? Did you remember Soapdish? We’re betting your reaction was something on the order of “Oh yeah, huh. That was a movie I guess.” We pull this 1991 comedy out of the drawer and give it a spin. See what we think! See if you agree! Also, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quant...

Are you ready for another Lost VHS Classic, kids? Well you’re in luck, because today we’re gonna have a go at the 1982 Steve Martin/Carl Reiner comedy, The Man With Two Brains! What is The Man With Two Brains, you ask? Well, we’ve seen it and we still aren’t entirely sure. On the surface it is a send-up of 50’s B-movie horror/suspense tropes about a mad scientist, a gold-digging femme fatale, and...

This week we watch your Dad’s favorite movie. Back before the Internet let us talk to our favorite introverts, conspiracy theorists and secessionists, men watched movies about men doing manly things with other men in a man’s world… but Fight Club was a splash of cold water that said, “Wake up - you’re living a lie.” This week we dig into why this film still works, why it was ahead of its time in s...

From the Better Late Than Never File comes our look back at Season 3 of the greatest show on television, The Boys! It may have taken 6 months for all of us to finally watch it, but so what? We've got jobs and stuff, ya losers! What matters is we've seen it, we loved it, and now we'll yammer on about Butcher, Homelander, Soldier Boy, and the rest of the gang in all their violent, bloody, psychologi...

Do you remember Video Stores? We sure do - because we’re old as F@%$. They used to be everywhere, a ubiquitous strip mall fixture purveying all manner of niche movie titles in every genre, rented in a format known as a “videocassette” tape that you could take home and play in your VCR machine. This was back in the 80s and 90s when physical media was how we consumed our entertainment, when giant ho...

Excelsior, bitches! Recently, Eric tried to binge-watch ALL of Marvel Phase 4 - a 2-year chunk of movies and TV shows. Then, to make it seem like there was a reason for this insanity, he pitched it as a show. We go through all 50 hours & 21 minutes of it - in an episode that, as we recorded it, felt only slightly longer. 0:00 - Intros 8:56 - WandaVision (2021) 12:10 - The Falcon and the Winter Sol...

Daniel Craig’s now-iconic movie detective Benoit Blanc is back in the latest mystery bonbon from writer-director Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. This one, as you may have deduced from the title, is the sequel to 2019’s equally fun deconstruction of classic whodunits, Knives Out. Again stacked with an impeccable cast, Johnson’s latest is another razor-sharp, eat-the-rich satire coc...

It’s that time of year again, where we take a long amount of time off and let things slide. That means we have a LOT of new stuff to talk about! Movies, TV shows, concerts, plays… we did a lot of stuff in the last weeks of 2022, and it’s time to dish. Check out what we checked out - it’s a freshitstravaganza! 0:00 - Intros 6:00 - Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) 17:00 - Black Adam (2022) 22:50 - Wh...