The Movie Breakdown

It is the return to the old format as we have several things to discuss this week. We have two reviews for you including the George Clooney directed and Ben Affleck starring 'The Tender Bar' and a sci-fi dystopian thriller starring Chloe Grace Moretz in 'Mother/Android.' We also pay tribute to three entertinament greats in Sidney Poitier, Betty White and Peter Bogdanovich.

It is the biggest show of the year as Scott Martin and Christopher Spicer look back at their favourite movies of 2021. They both list their top ten, and celebrate the best of the movie year. A great episode if you're looking for movie recommendations or if you just want to see what we loved in 2021.

2021 was a rough year for many people. While there were many great movies to ease the pain, there were also a lot of bad to make things worse. This week hosts Christopher Spicer and Scott Martin pan the worse of the bunch one last time as they both present their top ten worst movies of 2021. Then they try to be more positive by looking ahead and by both listing their ten most anticipated of 2022.

It is part one of our three-part look back at the year of movies in 2021. This week we're looking at the best of the underrated movies. These are the pictures that either are better than their critical reception, deserved way more people to have seen them or just a complete unknown movie. Both Scott Martin and Christopher Spicer list their ten most underrated movies. It is a great show for those l...

Surprise! We have an extra episode for you this week where we do stuff like talk movies, but we also have an announcement regarding the future of the podcast.

The listeners who have been with us for a few years may remember that Jojo Rabbit topped my best of the year list in 2019. Scott later admitted that if he had time to see it before that show that it would have been his number one movie as well. It is intriguing that one of the few times we both agreed on the best movie is also a picture that is very divisive among most critics who agree is well-ma...

Everywhere we look it screams Christmas especially if you're talking about our kids. The holiday season is all about the traditions, and one that many families have is sitting down to watch a holiday movie. There are a lot of them out there, and some even are argued that they aren't holiday films at all. We aren't here to declare what qualifies as holiday pictures. Instead, this week we gather aro...

There are many movies considered classics, but only a few that can be considered so ground-breaking that it changes how the movie industry operates and influences the next entire era of filmmaking. The 1967 crime drama, Bonnie and Clyde is without a doubt one of those movies as it ushered in the New Wave of cinema of the 1970s and brought things like the antihero to the forefront. It was a controv...

This week we're going all the back to 1972 for the satirical political drama starring Robert Redford in The Candidate. The movie is speaking into the climate and turmoil of its time, but like any good movie, it is still relevant and has lots to say about modern politics. It says something that most of the issues addressed then, still are prevalent today. We do a deep dive into this older film whil...

This week's episode does not have the most graceful or catchiest title, but it speaks the truth. This week we have 10 different categories like Go to Director or Beloved Childhood Movie, but Scott will be making what he thinks is the best pick for me and I'll be making what I think is the best pick for him. We will discover how well we know each other while also discussing a bunch of great movies....

The Movie Breakdown often champions certain movies or actors or filmmakers. We don't hide what we love, and we are eager to throw out recommendations for the things we enjoy. But you may have noticed there are lot of movies out there, and it can be hard celebrating everything that one holds dear. This week we are going to champion some movies, actors, subgenres and filmmakers that we really enjoy,...

For anyone who has been listening to The Movie Breakdown for a decent amount of time, you know that we don't always get excited about the bug studio tentpoles like other sites or shows. We tend to lean towards stuff with original stories or dare to stand-out as different from all the other big releases. But we have been excited about the big studio event picture, Dune. The main reason is that it i...

Halloween is right around corner, so we're dedicating this episode to horror movies. More specifically, horror franchises. Even more specific, we're creating our own ultimate horror movie franchises.  How are we doing this? We are both trying to create our own ten movie horror franchise. We are creating them from choosing one movie from various horror franchises. We can only pick one movie from a...

October is all about the trick or treats. This week on The Movie Breakdown we're offering both. Last week, we promised a deep-dive on the new theatrical release, Halloween Kills, but that was a trick. Instead, we're reviewing 2018's Halloween, which is also a treat, because you get to listen to me revisiting a movie that I didn't like initially and now shift my opinion.  We not only really dig int...

  Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers and listeners. Nothing says a Canadian Thanksgiving more than emotional scarring. That is why this week we're both listing ten movie moments that haunted and traumatized us as kids. These are not necessarily horror movies but actually, most of them were billed as children and family movies but had that scene that caused us many sleepless nights and runni...

We are trying out something different this week that is similar to a special episode we did way back at the beginning of The Movie Breakdown. In 2013, we did something called Mockbuster vs. Blockbuster where we compared a big blockbuster movie against the Asylum knock-off of that movie to see which one was better. We only ever did one episode. This time, two major movies are going to be matched in...

  Last year, we decided to revisit our 2013 top ten lists to see how it held up, and if we still loved the same movies that we did then. It was a lot of fun or at least, it was for us. For anyone who has listened to show for a long time, knows that we have declared many times that opinions and feelings with movies can evolve over time. This time, we wanted to revisit our 2014 list, which was a yea...

  It wasn't critically acclaimed or a massive box office powerhouse, but Weekend at Bernie's not only had quite a few fans upon its release but it is probably better remembered now then many bigger hits from the 1980s. Something about two guys trying to pretend a corpse is still alive has resonated with some movie fans. The Movie Breakdown has decided that the comedy needed some deep-dive attentio...

The kids are back to school, and that means a great time to review a high school comedy. In the early 1980s, there was several teen sex comedies like Porky's that were huge hits, but they'd start to get replaced by the equally popular but much better made John Hughes style teen dramas and comedies by the mid-1980s. The teen genre stalled by the end of the 1980s, but then entertainment focusing on...

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a podcast. That's right, it is The Movie Breakdown and we're reviewing the first big budget superhero event picture in Superman: The Movie from 1978. While it may be decades before MCU really made superhero movies the biggest event at the theatres, this movie was definitely one of the most influential of all-time and along with Star Wars, shaped the type of movies s...

  It is time for the annual look at the best movies that came out during the first half of the year. Much like last year, it is a few months late, because in Ontario, we didn't even have open theatres until July. We decided to hold off and wait for some of the big summer blockbusters to come out, so we could include them in the show.  What a fun show it is, as we talk movies for two and half hours...

  The summer movie season is often where we get the biggest and most popular movies of the year. It is the time that studios serve up their event movies that they hope will draw in giant crowds. It is the movies they put most of their budgets and attention with spectacular special effects, big stars and massive marketing campaigns. Sometimes these major movies turn into giant flops. or they may be...

  Eddie Murphy had already turned into a movie star with 48 Hrs. but with Beverly Hills Cop he rocketed up to being the biggest box office star of the 1980s. It is hard to explain in modern times, where there isn't the same focus on star power, the rabid popularity of Eddie Murphy. Beverly Hills Cop was a mega-hit thanks to Eddie Murphy, and it turned him into the most in-demand star. It would be...

The Movie Breakdown loves a good action movie. We also realize one of the things that really makes a great actioner is having an engaging and charismatic lead that you care about. This week we want to pay tribute to ten action stars including the mighty kings of our childhood, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, by both of us each picking the movie that we feel best defines them. We aren...

My brother was a big fan of the R.L. Stine Goosebumps series, but by the point those books became popular, I had already started gobbling up Stephen King novels. If the series was around when I was a bit younger, then I'm sure I'd have loved them, and it would have had a major impact on my childhood.  I must confess I am not well-versed in the different works of this beloved author, and I know ver...