To the '90s and Beyond! Film Podcast

Set in Berlin in 1989, shortly before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we find an MI6 agent named Lorraine Broughton on a mission to try to get a much sought after highly classified list of spies working for Western agencies around the world, kept hidden within the case of a luxury watch, in order to prevent it from going to the KGB. Operating in flashbacks as the bruised and fatigued agent divulg...

Kumail Nanjiani stars and co-scripts this romantic comedy about himself (more or less), a Pakistani immigrant to America turned stand-up comedian living in Chicago who ends up going out and then falling into a romantic relationship with a white, non-Muslim psychology graduate student named Emily. Contrary to both of their desires to stay unattached, things are going remarkably well, though that is...

In this outing, we find Peter Parker as an awkward teenager, who has a crush on schoolmate Liz, while also brushing up on his knowledge on a school team vying for a national academic competition. He also happens to have an internship with part-time father figure Tony Stark, who is using the opportunity to mentor the lad on the ways to use his technologically advanced costume that's enhanced like a...

Set in Atlanta, Ansel Elgort plays Baby, a baby-faced (naturally) but extremely talented driver who constantly plays music on several of his old iPods while he works to overcome his persistent tinnitus, the result of a childhood car accident that left him an orphan. The trouble is that Baby hates what he does and wants out as soon as his debt is paid off, which he does, only to find Doc knows he's...

Brain Candy deals with a drug company, Roritor Pharmaceuticals, that is in need of a hit wonder drug, launching a new and mostly untested antidepressant they call Gleemonex, which promises to locks its patient into the sensation of reliving their happiest memory. The new drug quickly becomes the number one on the market (even more popular than penicillin), as we follow several people who use the p...

Tom Cruise plays a roguish armed forces associate who doubling as a tomb-raiding antiquities procurer, Nick Morton, who, along with smart-alecky partner-in-crypts, Chris Vail, earns his living digging up ancient artifacts, then selling for the highest price he can get on the black market. Soon the men join forces with noted Egypt expert and archaeologist (and Morton's chance to hook up) Jenny Hals...

Wonder Woman starts with her origin on the shrouded and magically hidden island-paradise of Themyscira, where the Greek gods are real, and Diana is born and raised into the ways of the Amazons, who teach her honor and how to battle. All of their training is put to use when an American pilot and spy named Steve Trevor crashes in his plane off of the island's coast, with a boat of well-armed German...

Frantz is set in Quedlinburg, Germany, in 1919, just after the Great War (World War I) has concluded, though the aftermath is still quite fresh in the hearts and minds of the people. A local woman named Anna is but one of many who are mourning for the loss of young men in the war, grieving her beloved Frantz, killed in battle before he would return and marry her as planned. Living under the roof o...

Set in 1940, around the time of the London Blitz during World War II, Their Finest stars Gemma Arterton as Catrin Cole, a fledgling screenwriter from Wales who has been hired on by the British Ministry of Information, Film Division, looking to women to fill in jobs for some of the men lost to fight the war, to work in London on inspirational films geared toward women. Later, she is hired on to hel...

Amy Schumer stars as Emily Middleton, who cajoles her divorced doting mother Linda to accompany her on a non-refundable vacation to a posh resort in Ecuador she booked back when she had a job and a significant other to come with her. It's fun for the ladies at first, with Emily meeting hunky suitor James and Linda enjoying the poolside with a good book. Sure enough, as warned not long after arriva...

Batman & Bill is a Hulu-original documentary that asserts that, contrary to popular belief, that Bob Kane was not only not the sole creator of the DC Comics' superhero, The Batman, but wasn't really the main ideas guy behind his most iconic aspects. As you could guess from the film's title, there is another person, a reclusive but creative man named Bill Finger, who molded Batman from the get-go t...

This second volume finds Peter Quill and the gang getting their bacons saved by someone who is more than a man, named Ego, who claims to be Peter's father. Despite skepticism due to Ego's seeming abandonment, Peter is invited to join Ego on the latter's own Eden-like planet, called, of course, Ego's Planet, where he must periodically return to in order to keep it alive, residing there with only hi...

Kristen Stewart plays Maureen Cartwright, an American artist working in Paris as a personal shopper for an internationally famous model and celebrity named Kyra, who wants her to purchase the latest in designer clothes and jewelry before they are worn by anyone else. Maureen is unhappy in both her career and location, tempted somewhat by her long-distance boyfriend, who is currently living in the...

In this entry, we open with Dominic Toretto on honeymoon with his beloved Letty in Havana, Cuba, where, of course, he gets into a bit of racing for pink slips on the never-too-crowded city streets. Dom finds his stay not entirely blissful when he is confronted and blackmailed by a strange woman called Cipher, who reveals herself to have something on him so powerful that would make him turn away fr...

Scarlett Johansson stars as Major, a law-enforcement agent whose human brain, after a terrible accident that nearly killed her, has been put into a body that's entirely synthetic -- she's essentially a robot with a human mind, and the first of her kind. She works for Section 9, a task force currently trying to take down a powerful hacker named Kuze (Pitt, Criminal) who has been using the technolog...

This one puts the action on the International Space Station, whose six-person crew have just discovered a single-cell organism, the very first evidence of life outside of Earth, within one of the soil samples they've taken from Mars. Powers that be at home want them to do some testing on Calvin, as they've dubbed it, before giving the "all clear' to bring down to a terrestrial lab. Study they do,...

The story involves a lovely and fiercely independent girl named Belle, who lives with her widower inventor father in a small provincial French village. She'd rather pursue her own path, which brings consternation to the local narcissistic he-man, Gaston, who intends to marry Belle because she's the prettiest girl in town. After Maurice gets lost in the thick and ominous woods, Belle goes out to fi...

After his grandmother passes away, late-30s New York financier Peter reluctantly returns to his home town in Warwick, Rhode Island, for the first time in about two decades, to tidy up her estate. Unfortunately, he inadvertently loses his wallet en route, causing him to seek out his old high school friend Donald for a few bucks, though he hasn't been in contact in about as long as he bailed on his...

After an introductory sequence set during World War II to introduce the massive ape, Kong, and the island he resides on, we spring ahead to 1973, where we find the United States' government, in the waning days of their involvement in Vietnam, planning an exploration of the previously uncharted island in the South Pacific perpetually under storm clouds, hoping to lay claim there before the Russians...

Raoul Peck's Academy Award-nominated documentary on famed author James Baldwin, whose unfinished manuscript for a proposed memoir on the deaths of several Civil Rights giants, tentatively entitled, "Remember This House", provides the basis for the commentary about his experiences as an African-American in a country that continuously seems to not deal with its overbearing racism head on.

Set in the year 2029, we find a world where there are no newly born mutants, and the ones that did exist have been all but completely wiped out. Spirit broken, body beaten and losing its ability to quickly heal, and with a sense of self-loathing to the point where suicide seems an increasingly attractive option, Logan finds himself working as a limousine driver, trying to scrape together enough fu...

Daniel Kaluuya stars as photographer Chris Washington, a young African-American involved in a close relationship with the white Rose Armitage, so close that it's time for Chris to meet Rose's parents. Chris is nervous about their weekend retreat to Rose's family lake house because Rose hasn't told them that he's black because it doesn't matter to her, and her liberal parents should be all for it,...

Isabelle Huppert stars as Michele Leblanc, the manager of a video-game company. Michelle is raped by a masked man in her own home. Because of her checkered past, she decides to not report it to the police, and is reticent to tell friends right away. The perpetrator continues to stalk Michele, causing her to seek measures to protect herself, yet she is also conflicted by her fantasies, both terrify...

In this follow-up to the wildly popular kinky romance drama Fifty Shades of Grey, we find perpetually blushing publishing-house editorial assistant Anastasia Steele making it through life without the help or attention of controlling Seattle-based mega-billionaire Christian Grey, mostly due to the fact that he couldn't open himself up to her much beyond his taste for sado-masochistic sexual acts. W...

The Joker here is a bit more of a softie -- still a madman, but one that knows the bond of hatred between himself and the Batman needs to be reciprocal so that he can be the yin to his yang. To cement himself as #1 on Batman's hate list, Joker and a host of other baddies of assorted popularity are out to destroy Gotham City. Batman catches Joker in the act, but still sees him as just another perp...