To the '90s and Beyond! Film Podcast

Set in London, a clever but unhappy,insomnia-afflicted orphan named Sophie wakes up in the middle of the evening and sees something outside the orphanage window. Investigating, she discovers a giant man skulking around in the neighborhood outside, causing her to go into a panic. He grabs her and steals her away to protect his further discovery from others, taking the girl to his home in a nearby r...

Adam Devine and Zac Efron play the Mike and Dave of the film's title, respectively, two irresponsibly party animals who've merely used all their family get-togethers as excuses to get drunk, chase skirts, and invariably embarrass their kin through shenanigans that cause more mayhem than mirth (the Wedding Crashers comparisons are so obvious they're practically obvious to reference it during the mo...

Blake Lively stars as Nancy, former medical school student from Galveston, TX, who travels to her recently deceased mother's favorite secret surfing spot in a lush spot on the Mexican coast to feel a connection with her as part of the grieving and healing process. When her friend bails on her at the last minute, she decides to go it alone, catching some hellacious waves and enjoying the brisk sunn...

Elle Fanning stars as Jesse, an awkward and innocent 16-year-old who arrives from out of state and takes up residence at a fleabag motel in Pasadena, hoping to kick start a career as a model within a decadent version of Los Angeles as her beauty is the only marketable asset she has. During a promo shoot, she becomes friends with a make-up artist named Ruby, who introduces her to other models in th...

Twenty years after the first war for Earth between humans and their would-be alien exterminators, Earth has made light years of advancements in adopting things they've learned from the remnant alien technology, which they've not only used to rebuild their destroyed cities, but also to jump far ahead in terms of air and space travel, including to the moon. Those who helped save the planet have beco...

The storyline starts in 1996. A young, CG-enhanced version of Dwayne Johnson plays overweight and geeky misfit Robbie Weirdicht, the frequent target of ridicule by the bullies in his high school.  By contrast, the most popular kid in school, Calvin Joyner, is the kind of most-likely-to-succeed guy who excels in school in all the ways Robbie does not, but bestows an act of kindness on the pudgy kid...

De Palma is strictly a documentary about Brian De Palma, in his own words. No other people are interviewed, and the interviewers voices are not heard. All you see is Brian De Palma on the screen, either front and center, or while clips of each movie play out under them, or while photographs and newspaper articles give us a glimpse into the public and private life he experienced at the time.

The story revolves around two people, Will Traynor, a rich-but-dejected London man who is living a life of pain and solitude as a quadriplegic, and Louisa, aka "Lou", a chatty and free-spirited woman hired take care of Will's basic needs as well as to lift her spirits with her effervescent company. The problem is that the pain Will is in is not just physical; he misses his old life as an athletic,...

Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) directs and co-scripts this insightful drama with mild thriller elements about three unrelated refugees from the war-torn island nation of Sri Lanka who find it hard to assimilate to life in the rough-and-tumble public housing projects of Paris.  Dheepan is the name of a dead man that the older man of the trio assumes the identity of in order to escape fr...

Ellen Degeneres voices the short-term memory-addled Dory as an adult blue tang, continuing her friendship with clownfishes Marlin and his son Nemo in the reefs near Australia. Dory is struggling to remember her parents that she was separated from at an early age, though she sometimes remembers fragments of those early days, with enough clues to set out on her own to try to find them in, "the jewel...

Lindon plays Thierry, who we find at the beginning of the film unemployed for a year and a half since being laid off from his job as a factory worker, desperate for any form of work in order to make ends meet, with a wife and special-needs child to take care of, and an apartment that he's just a few years from paying off. He's trying as best as he can to get back on his feet, but he feels less tha...

Much like in Homer's "The Iliad", the storyline told from both parties involved in the war, we're introduced into this fantasy universe through the Orcs first, a warlike race of strong brutes who livelihoods are on the verge of extinction, forcing them to find a new home with the magical invention of a portal, crafted by the Orc-mage Gul'dan, to connect them to the realm of Azeroth, there the Huma...

The wildly popular troupe of master illusionists known as the Four Horsemen do mostly for self in this outing, no longer the Robin Hoods of the glitzy stage one year removed from prior events. This one's more personal, putting a backstory to the behind-the-scenes ringleader of the Horsemen, FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes, tying in the mystery of his magician father's death with a connection to the magic d...

The story starts in 1976, with an introductory nod to the case that made the Warrens most famous, in Amityville, the source of a best-selling book and a whole slew of horror movies. allegedly based on true stories. Their reputation spreads to other parts of the world, as the church sends the Warrens to Enfield , a borough of north London, where they set about investigating the home of Peggy Hodgso...

Taran Killam stars as Justin, who we meet at the beginning of the film waking up to hear his girlfriend of five years' voice on a popular national shock-jock radio show breaking up with him after revealing she had a threesome to get back at him for forgetting their anniversary. It seems everyone he knows has heard it, and rib him mercilessly before they encourage him to get back out there and forg...

In this entry, the dreaded nemesis of humanity, Shedder (Tee) is broken out of prison by kooky-but-brilliant scientist Baxter Stockman (Perry), who has been entrusted to invent an ultra-powerful transporter device that will allow for travel between dimensions. Also on board is the maniacal alien Krang, who is part giant robot, part evil living brain, who sets about getting Shredder to use some str...

Greta Gerwig plays liberal arts college advisor Maggie Hardin, 30-something in age, neurotic in stage, feeling her biological clock is ticking in thunderous tones, thinking it best to go the route of artificial insemination, given her history with men seems to be little more than a bunch of relationships that fail before the six-month period. Through a clerical mishap at the school she works in, s...

Andy Samberg stars as Conner, the most popular member of a Beastie Boys-esque hit rap trio known as the Style Boyz, know known under his stage name, Conner4Real. He retained the services of the other Style Boyz member, Owen, who produced the music, as his current DJ (just for show -- he plays the music set from his old iPod), even though it's pretty much all for show these days, as ultra-narcissis...

Widowed Marnie Minervini lives in the Los Angeles area, a New Jersey transplant, to be near her daughter Lori, who has moved there to pursue her career as a screenwriter. That's much to Lori's chagrin, as Marnie, without her husband or any friends in the area, is lonely and doting, calling and texting her daughter constantly, to the point where most of her attempts have started to go ignored, resu...

Set in late 18th Century England, Kate Beckinsale plays recently widowed and unquestionably un-wealthy Lady Susan Vernon, visiting (or, more accurately, mooching off of) her brother-in-law Charles and his wife Catherine with eyes use her prodigious skill in flirtation on Catherine's handsome younger brother Reginald, who is a man of some means. Lady Susan also aims to get her teenage daughter Fred...

The film starts off at a 25th high-school reunion where Charlie meets up with an old friend named Max, who seems to have far exceeded his initially dismal expectations in life in almost every respect by being the kind of "Action Jackson" globe-hopping alpha male every boy dreams of becoming. Max sees Charlie is in a loveless marriage to his philandering high-school crush, raising two kids that hum...

Tilda Swinton stars as Marianne Lane, a Bowie-esque,world renown rock star who is on vacation with Paul, her documentarian boyfriend of six years, on Pantelleria, a small, secluded Mediterranean island off between the coasts of Sicily and Tunisia. Marianne is there for some R&R from her most recent tour, in recovery from surgery on her throat that she is hoping will be successful so that she can r...

The story picks up as Alice has come home to London for a spell after traveling the world as the captain of her own ship. However, she comes to find that her ex, Hamish, is using financial leverage that pressures her to stop adventuring by handing over the ship and taking up a job as a clerk at his shipping company in order to pay for the family home that Alice's mother had signed over to him. Una...

Jason Sudeikis voices Red, aka "eyebrows", a hot-headed cardinal (one presumes) who frequently doesn't quite see eye to eye with his feathered flock around him on the island they all reside in, Bird Island. These non-flying birds think they are all there is in this world until the day that a ship drops anchor on Red's home, destroying it, making him an enemy but the other birds seem more friendly...

This entry in the retro X-Men series finds the mutants in the series-alternate universe year of 1983, ten years after the events of Days of Future Past, where the cold war is rampant between the United States and the Soviet Union, with most people already worried about being on the brink of annihilation of life on Earth within just a few hours if nuclear war should ever break out. Erik Lehnsherr,...