The Review Show

Episode 138. We're kicking off 2021 with a bang watching all of Daniel Craig's James Bond movies to date -- Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, and Spectre -- in anticipation of finally seeing No Time To Die this year. Bond has recently received his 007 status and his license to kill when he enters a high-stakes poker tournament to defeat a terrorist banker and falls for the treacherous tre...

Happy 5 year anniversary to us here at The Whatnauts. Kyle, Melissa, Ignacio, Gino, and Alan gather for an end-of-the-year party! We eat pizza, play trivia, discuss video games and movies of the year, give out Review Show awards, and tour through the history of The Whatnauts and talk about our podcasting goals for 2021. Thanks for being here and learning and growing with us, we're excited for the...

Episode 137. For our holiday special and final episode of 2020, we go out on a musical note with the new Netflix movie Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey. Jeronicus Jangle was once the best toymaker around until his apprentice stole his greatest invention and his book of blueprints. Jeronicus loses his spark for building toys and closes up shop, and becomes estranged from his family. Years later,...

Episode 136. This week we welcomed the holiday season by watching 1988's Scrooged, a contemporary retelling of A Christmas Carol. Frank Cross is a TV executive planning a massive live broadcast production of A Christmas Carol for Christmas Eve, but big business is the only thing he has going for him. He's estranged from loved ones, and his colleagues regard him as heartless. All day on the 24th, h...

Episode 135. We watched season one of the Netflix original anime series Great Pretender. Makoto Edamura considers himself the best scam artist in Japan until he's outsmarted by Laurant Thierry, a man who he thought was just a clueless tourist. Fascinated to learn his ways and eager to get his money back, Edamura follows Laurant to Los Angeles and finds himself deep in a false drug-dealing scheme t...

Episode 134. We finished reading all ten volumes of Irredeemable and wow what an ending! Tony is back on Earth, still set on destruction, and the world's few remaining leaders turn to their last hope, a secret weapon that could stop him but doom millions of citizens in exchange. Tony discovers the origin of his powers, finally getting an answer to the question that has plagued him his whole life,...

Episode 133. We watched M. Night Shyamalan's trilogy of unconventional superhero thrillers, Unbreakable (2000), Split (2017), and Glass (2019). Security guard David Dunn is the sole survivor of a massively fatal train crash who realizes he isn't just lucky, he's invulnerable, and he's always felt a duty to protect the people of Philadelphia. Art curator Elijah Price was born with terribly fragile...

Episode 132. We watched Rian Johnson's 2019 murder mystery Knives Out. A best-selling author kills himself the night of his 85th birthday party, leaving behind a family more concerned about their inheritance than they are about grieving, a nervous private nurse who may not be telling the whole truth, and a detective with a sense that this isn't just an open-and-shut suicide case. As the nurse trie...

Episode 131. We read the first four volumes of manga The Drops of God by Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto. Shizuku Kanzaki is the son of a famous wine critic who's never drank wine himself. When his father dies, Shizuku finds that he legally adopted his wine critic protege and wants his two sons to compete for their inheritance. In his massive wine collection, he has named "Twelve Apostles," wines that...

Episode 130. We're continuing our monthly coverage of the comic series Irredeemable, talking about volumes 5-7 this week. Qubit has sabotaged the team's attempt to kill The Plutonian, believing that there's still a way to solve the problem without putting death on their consciences. He knows of a secret force who can capture Tony -- but can anyone keep him locked up for long? We learn Modeus's tru...

Episode 129. For our final Halloween episode this year, we watched a Netflix original show from India, the ghost story Typewriter. An author of horror novels died mysteriously in his mansion decades ago, and the place has remained empty since then, believed to be haunted. The author's family is moving back into the estate and they uncover an abandoned typewriter, which sets off a chain of mysterio...

Episode 128. We watched Anna Biller's 2016 film The Love Witch, gorgeously styled after low-budget 1970s Technicolor melodramas. After the destruction of her marriage, a witch named Elaine moves to a new town and sets her sights on finding true love. She brews spells, seduces men, and when they don't turn out to be the love she's looking for, she kills them. She falls for the detective investigati...

Episode 127. This week we read the DC comics series Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., with issues written by Jeff Lemire and Matt Kindt. Frankenstein, the big green monster you know and love, works for the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive, a high-tech organization that protects the world from arcane threats. He teams up with his estranged wife, the four-armed Lady Frankenstein, and a group...

Episode 126. To kick off the spooky month of October, we watched season one of the TV show Hannibal. Will Graham is a criminal psychologist who is pulled from his teaching position to work in the field, using his unique empathy abilities to put himself in a serial killer's head. After catching the murderer, Will can't get himself out of that mindset, and he turns to a psychologist colleague to hel...

Episode 125. Time for another continuing monthly series! We'll be reading all of the comic book Irredeemable by Mark Waid and Peter Krause, and we started with volumes 1-4. The Plutonian is the greatest superhero the world has ever seen. He's incredibly powerful, kind-hearted, always there to save the day -- until the day he snaps and destroys his entire city. Now the world lives in fear of this r...

Episode 124. Our second half of the Shametember series is a cult classic sci-fi movie that cyberpunk Kyle should have seen by now, Luc Besson's The Fifth Element. Korben Dallas is your average New York guy in the 23rd century, trying to make a living in his flying cab, when a mysterious young woman dives into his vehicle and asks for help escaping from the pursuing authorities. She's the key to an...

Episode 123. Welcome to our first "Shame-tember" episode where we talk about a movie one of our co-hosts definitely should have seen before now, but hasn't! This week, Melissa goes back to where James Bond first started with 1962's Dr. No. Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the death of a British agent and work with the CIA to find who is interfering with the NASA missile launches nearby in Fl...

Episode 122. This week we watched the short-lived Disney cartoon Tron Uprising, set between the events of the original Tron movie and Tron: Legacy. A totalitarian regime is cracking down on The Grid, and a young mechanic named Beck wants to stand up for his fellow programs. The legendary hero Tron has been in hiding, but he reaches out to Beck and offers him the training he needs to be the city's...

Episode 121. We're trying a special kind of episode showing each other a sitcom one of us grew up with, but the other person barely knows. Melissa needs to learn about Seinfeld, Kyle needs to learn about The Simpsons. We nominated three episodes from our show to talk about: Kyle picked The Chinese Restaurant, The Contest, and The Rye, Melissa picked Marge vs. The Monorail, Bart Sells His Soul, and...

Episode 120. This week we watched the Japanese TV series Midnight Diner, which you can find on Netflix as just Midnight Diner (the original three seasons) and Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories (season four onwards, after Netflix acquired it as one of its own productions). Kyle watched season one of the original and Melissa watched season "one" of Tokyo Stories. Whoops. We still had an exciting convers...

Episode 119. This week we read Superman: Rebirth, the first volume of the deluxe edition that collects issues 1-13 from writer Peter J. Tomasi and artist Patrick Gleason. After the Superman of this universe dies, a Superman lost from another universe decides to stay here and fill his role. Clark "Smith" now lives on a farm with his wife Lois and ten-year-old son Jonathan. He fights any threat that...

Episode 118. This week we watched Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic mystery Murder on the Orient Express. Renowned detective Hercule Poirot is determined to take a break from solving crimes to enjoy a leisurely train trip, until one of his fellow passengers is murdered. Everyone traveling in that train car is a suspect. As he sinks deeper into the inescapable mystery s...

Episode 117. This week we watched the Amazon Prime original movie The Vast of Night. It's the late 1950s in rural Cayuga, New Mexico. The whole town is at the high school basketball game, but Fay and Everett are busy working. While she's transferring phone calls on the switchboard, Fay encounters distressed callers and hears a strange noise interrupt Everett's radio broadcast. Someone calls in bel...

We say “goodbye, friend” to Mr. Robot as we discuss its fourth and final season! After the Dark Army kills someone close to Elliot, he focuses everything on taking down Whiterose’s mysterious machine and her cabal that has been controlling world affairs and finances. We discover devastating Alderson family secrets, the origin of the Mr. Robot persona, and truths that Elliot has hidden from everyon...

Episode 115. This week friend of the show Sam joins us to talk about the anime film Promare from Studio Trigger. Thirty years ago, people around the world suddenly developed unstable pyrokinetic powers. They decimated cities, killed millions, and became an ever-growing band of outcasts known as the Burnish. Burning Rescue is a fire-fighting team that works against a Burnish terrorist group in thei...