The Wages of Cinema

whoa. sandworms. you hate em, right? well, here at the Wages of Cinema we just got back from riding a mean mother sandworm and boy are our arms and joints and hips tired and we're here to tell you all about it! Oh, wait, ok ::holds heads:: we had too much spice or something. I (Jack) meant we recorded our thoughts in Denis Villeneuve's DUNE - part one (and fingers crossed they make part two) - and...

spoilers begin 25 minutes in How does Marvel do a gigantic Wuxia influenced adaptation of a series that origibly was inspired by Bruce Lee? Well, let's just say Marvel is gonna Marvel, but if you got the star of nearly all of Wong Kar Wai's films (he was in Hero too we neglected to mention in the eoisode), how can you go wrong? Jack, Korey and Guest Star Matt saw Shang Chi and the Legend of the Te...

THE WAGES OF CINEMA PODCAST IS A PODCAST!!!!! But for real, we're so glad you can join us this week for the hot-as-a-OMG-WE'RE-BUNRING-ALIVE takes on the latest (and greatest?) of DCEU movies... or do we even consider them part of this "Extended" universe or is it just... filmmakers making the stuff they want to? Seems that way. And all the better for us where we now have 100+ million blockbusters...

In Russia, podcast records you! Yep, the FULL Wages crew - Andrew, Guest Star Matt (of https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com) and Trash Panda Korey, along with as always Jack - tackle the latest from Marvel, and discuss all Tasks and plot mechanics, and why sometimes a Midquel or a Tenaquel or whatever we are calling this now can be a tricky thing to pull off. RED SPOILERS 30 mins in

The Purge has to come to an end... but did it have to be like this? Jack and Korey saw the fifth movie in the Purge franchise from Jason Blum, James DeMonaco and Michael Bay, full of violence and grimness and failed immigration policies... How did it go? Listen to find out (spoilers 40 minutes in fyi).

Live from Hackensack, New Jersey (no extra missile here, Luthor, take that!) comes the Wages of Cinema!! LOOK! Up in the sky: it's a bird, it's a plane, no it's... discourse!! Jack and Korey watch the first five Superman movies! Yep, even Supergirl. (We start off for about the first ten to fifteen minutes talking about what led up to us doing this gigantic episode- and why Superman Returns is deci...

Think of all the good the Wages of Cinema does.... muahaha! Nah but seriously, we talk at great length about these ridiculous pieces of modern exploitation pulp (yet with kernels of true facts all around).

ROOOAAAAR! SCRREEEOOONK! This is all to say this movie's about Capitalism, folks! Our first major release-review of 2021 and we have returning guests Andrew and Guest-Star Matt as we take apart and try to figure out what is is that makes this big bag of emotions known as Kong and the less-emotional but no less motivated Godzilla go after one another. Is there even reasoning to their bashing each o...

Well... they can't all be Oscar nominees, right, folks? We watched six - count your gold pieces there, SIX - Leprechaun movies (we neglected to mention we saw one of these *on St Patrick's Day" because of course we had to - of the Leprechaun series of movies starring Warwick Davis! what did we think? With one of our co-hosts with the alias "Trash-Panda," It's difficult to say for sure. I mean, is...

Psst hey everyone, did you know there were movies released last year? Madness, we know, but even more wild a thing: the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (those lovable scamps known as the AMPAS) are not backing away from the same thing they've done for almost a hundred years and counting, giving cinema and the people who star and craft it all recognition through nominations and in part...

Tonight on this special Saint Stephen's Day podcast (or is it Boxing Day, one of those), Jack, Trash-Panda Korey, and joining for the first time as a group since Rise of Skywalker (shudder - the movie, not the episode, that's great and you should listen to it), Guest Star Matt and Andrew discuss the latest from Warners and the DCEU (no, we don't get into HBO Max and the theatrical experience diffe...

Is it at all possible to come to the suspenseful and gothic heights of what Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick achieved with their (Best Picture winning) achievement in 1940? Ben Wheatley, the idiosyncratic and very off-kilter genre director behind such films as Free Fire, A Field in England and Kill List, decided to aim as high as he could with his first Netflix production, and the r...

Everybody's always talking about Mank! Mann- Mank- Mank!! Actually, not really, but in this latest episode, Jack and Korey watch the new film from director David Fincher (and his late father, writer Jack) about the man who had a hand in crafting what many call the greatest American film ever made (as the poster said more simply of Citizen Kane: "It's Terrific!" and that's truth in advertising righ...

What started as a pulp author doing a tawdry riff on the Ripped-from-the-Headlines saga of Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein somehow turned into - via one of the superlative True Entertainers of his century in the medium, Alfred Hitchcock - a series! (though mostly after he died, funny that, but anyway). This is a story all about how Norman Bates got twisted upside down, we'd like for you to take a...

The question isn't "Oh, this Hulu 'Into the Dark' series from Blumhouse? That's vaguely familiar based on the targeted ads I get on my Instagram. What's it about?" The question is "What ISN'T it about?" We mean, just in the crop of films we talk about today on this SPOOKTACULAR SAVINGS episode (and rightfully posted on Tuesday... the 13th!) - We're talking sinister religious purity rituals; dastar...

(Please note, there were some issues with the audio recording for this episode, in part due to the air conditioner but also the placement of the mics too close to it, our apologies in advance for dip in quality, we hope you still enjoy) Finally, the movie uh... some of us were asking for(?) (One of them, Special Guest Star Matt returning for the first time since before the pandemic hit, now has be...

::NOLAN BLAAAAAMMMM:: Spoilers at... they abound. Cutting to the chase (as the car goes backwards in inverse time loops), Jack saw Tenet, the 11th feature film from Christopher Nolan, and Korey did not. Why that is has much to do with Covid 19 ... but it also may have to do with the movie itself. why that is? is that why? backwards and forwards we go again. And meanwhile, the question remains: why...

What is an auteur? How do you define Cinematic "Style"? Is it a major problem to be excessive when making films? What about if one is "pushing the envelope" and going too far? Can a filmmaker be accused rightly of hating women in his movies? Brian De Palma has been a controversial figure for a long time, but more-so in the 1970's and 1980's - unfortunately for the world, he hasn't made a film in H...

Episode 150: Josephine Decker's SHIRLEY & Spike Lee's DA 5 BLOODS by Jack Gattanella

Episode 149: The Quarantine Cinema by Jack Gattanella

(and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn... sorry, couldn't fit the full title in the description) What to make of this now? A follow-up (not quite sequel? Spin-off? It's its own sexy fiery motherf-er of a beast) to SUICIDE SQUAD where Harley Quinn has broken up (FOR GOOD!) from the Joker finds her in a plot involving a diamond that everybody wants, including one villain nicknamed "Bl...

(THIS IS A RE-UPLOAD - the episode was previously featured in May of 2017, but for some reason became no longer available in the United States. This is the same episode with very minor tweaks to music) 70's rock soundtrack = check Very weird but highly colorful filmmaking and creatures and designs = oh yes a check Dave Bautista having the time of his life as Drax? = check the cutest piece of tree...

And now for part the second, wherein the two parties of the Wages of Cinema share the same fifth, third, second and first entries, but number four for Jack and Korey is different. The running theme of these movies? What does one do with that fragile thing called LIFE? email - wagesofcinema@gmail.com

Sometimes the end of a decade brings a whole lot of amazing/great/groundbreaking films (see 1969, 1979 or 1999 for more on that). 2019 may... not be quite that. But there were enough major works of artistic achievement that struck us at the Wages of Cinema as worth discussing, and it turned out to be such a fecund topic that we went for TWO PARTS! Of course, there may be some spoilers abound so pr...

Have your fill from Christmas dinner? Or from latkes at Hannukah? Or your meal at Kwanza? How about that giant Bantha from your Life Day celebratory feast? We have just the ticket for you with one of our most MASSIVE episodes (in length and hopefully in scope of conversation). We break down our rankings of all 11 Star Wars movies (technically there is a twelfth, but only Jack saw that, and we don'...