Verbal Diorama

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to Animation Season! The first movie in the season is the newest movie featured and also the highest grossing. It's also probably the most culturally significant, emotionally resonant and spiritual of the season too.  Pixar's Coco . I feel like this movie is more comparable to Kubo and the Two Strings than it is to its fellow Day of the Dead animated stabl...

Before you listen to this episode, you need to follow a few rules. Keep this episode away from sunlight (that's easy, the days are still short....) Never get this episode wet. But most importantly, no matter how much this episode pleads, no matter how much it begs, NEVER FEED EPISODE 74 AFTER MIDNIGHT! Got it?! Good. This episode is sweet and lovely, but it could multiply and turn into a download...

Steve Rogers and Tony Stark could never be accused of being best buds. There's always been a resentment there from Tony, especially when his father admired Steve Rogers so much, and it's always been simmering in the background. They've worked together as colleagues, to fight the Chitauri invasion of New York and came together again, with the Avengers, to fight Tony's creation Ultron. But Ultron re...

Captain America: The First Avenger ended with Steve Rogers defeating HYDRA and waking up in the modern day. Captain America barely had a chance to understand what was going on before he was thrust into fighting the Chitauri invasion in The Avengers. Post the Battle of New York and Phase 1 of the MCU as a whole, the world is aware of potential threats from other worlds, as well as the mightiest her...

Talk about Captain America: The First Avenger? I can do this all day. It's one of the MCUs most underrated gems. It's less bombastic than most in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Its World War II setting grounds the movie in an alternate reality. Chris Evans brings depth and humility to Steve Rogers, after the super serum that turns him into the star-spangled man with a plan, but mostly before, when...

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), to give it its full name (until that changed to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey) is the first and only movie released in 2020 that I'm covering in 2020, but to be honest there's not many 2020 movies out there. It's also the last movie I saw in cinemas before the COVID-19 pandemic. I've seen this movie three times this year, and each...

The Atomic Blonde and John Wick comparisons are not lost on me, and trust me when I say that I love Atomic Blonde to a similar, but very different degree to the John Wick(s). Because while both use colour very dramatically, and thrive on that ultra stylized violence I clearly have a passion for, while John Wick is all about vengeance, Lorraine Broughton is all about espionage, and Charlize Theron...

This one feels so bitter-sweet to be talking about. This episode was originally scheduled for mid-September, but due to the sudden passing of Chadwick Boseman on 28th August, I postponed it out of respect. After V for Vendetta it feels right to be talking about a hero who inspired so many, and by that I don't just mean T'Challa as the Black Panther, but Chadwick Boseman himself. A man of grace, in...

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate.  This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vici...

SURPRISE!! I kept this off the schedule just in case I couldn't quite pull it off, but having recently rewatched it, I decided to do a bonus episode on Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight just for Halloween, which deserves WAY more recognition than it gets. From a great well-known cast of faces, such as William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, Billy Zane, Dick Miller and Thomas Haden Church to some genuinely...

Listen, for all the online discourse in 2016, Ghostbusters (2016) is in no way as bad as it's been made out to be. Is it perfect? No. Is it the superior Ghostbusters? No. Is it the Anti-Christ of the Ghostbusters universe? No. Do I find it hilariously funny and love these women? YES! Is Chris Hemsworth the most gifted human being in the world other than Keanu Reeves? Probably! Joining me with his...

Before we start, a trigger warning. Scream is unfortunately inspired by some gruesome, horrific true crime events which are mentioned briefly in this episode. Although I don't go into details, I do mention violence and sexual assault, so if you'd rather not hear this part of the story, please skip the following times 15:54-17:53 . I do mention a warning before it starts too. The section lasts just...

I thought we'd play a game.... It's been 9 months since I last featured a Laika movie, and I've waited a long time on purpose to bring Coraline to the podcast. Because Coraline is scary. It's a genuine horror movie that just happens to be animated. And like most horror, it's the real life elements that Coraline speaks about; family, trust, attempted kidnap and deceptive adults that are the real ho...

Scooby-dooby-doo! Where are you? We've got some work to do now! I'm joined by my furry sidekick Jess (she's not happy we're discussing a movie about a dog!) to talk all about the 2002 live-action adaptation of Scooby-Doo (and a little about its sequel Monsters Unleashed). We all grew up with some iteration of Scooby-Doo, and it's that nostalgia that fuels this movie, along with some great performa...

There are many astonishing things about The Rocketeer.... Its origins in pulp serials its authentic comic book style its unknown leading man its innocence and timelessness its beautiful score by James Horner its stunning art deco poster But the most amazing, brilliant, incredible thing about The Rocketeer, is how much people love it. Despite its lacklustre box office, and the fact that Disney have...

This is it. The Princess Bride. As You Wish. Death cannot stop my true love for this movie. All it can do is delay it for 59 episodes. Verbal Diorama, inconceivably, goes downhill from here because there is no movie as perfect as one about fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love AND miracles... There's a shortage of perfect movies in the world. It would be...

In a change to the scheduled programming, Death Becomes Her moves up the schedule slightly and marks the first appearances on the podcast for global Hollywood icons Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. Yes, Bruce Willis is also in this movie, and he's quite good, but the appeal for Death Becomes Her has always, for me, been Streep and Hawn, who wanted a star vehicle for them both and when Thelma and Loui...

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind; I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme. I hate the way you're always right, I hate it when you lie, I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it when you're not a...

It's got awe-inspiring practical puppets, flawless CGI, fantastic performances, awesome cinematography and Unix systems (I know this!). Welcome to Jurassic Park! 27 years later, it's still the T-Rex of action, adventure, horror and sci-fi, as billionaire John Hammond and his team of scientists spend so much time thinking they could, they don't stop to think if they should. Directed by Steven Spiel...

Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.  X-Men, based on the comic books created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, like many projects in Hollywood, moved arou...

Make way, make way for Disney's first computer generated animated foray into the Polynesian islands, mythology and culture (although not the first animated foray - that goes to Lilo and Stitch!) to the island of Motonui, and its future chief Moana; a young woman who feels a call to the ocean (not surprising as her name literally means 'ocean') and is tasked with finding the demigod Maui, restoring...

Computer, what topic is episode 54 on? "Galaxy Quest" Episode 54 is on Galaxy Quest! Pedal to the metal, and get ready for some vertical Thermian handclaps for the crew of the NSEA Protector with returning special guest Crewman #6..... aka Andy from Geek Salad! You may remember him from Episode 23 on Mystery Men. He's the plucky comic relief in this episode, and unlike Guy Fleegman's Crewman #6 on...

Serenity, the continuation and culmination of Joss Whedon's one-season space western TV show Firefly, had the full backing of Universal after acquiring the rights of Firefly from Fox, who really didn't have a clue what Firefly was, or even the common decency to air all the episodes in order.... this is not the first time Fox have been world-class a-holes on something I've featured on this podcast....

The Nice Guys, upon its release in May 2016, found itself facing off against a comedy sequel, an animated movie of a million-selling mobile game and two separate superhero franchise sequels. It's really no wonder it suffered at the U.S. box office. An original idea, from the always brilliant mind of Shane Black, needed room to breathe and find its feet. Sadly, it never got to do that. Had it been...

Paying tribute to the classic no-sex sex comedies from the late '50s and early '60s, Down With Love is a wonderful, bright, kitschy romcom classic that seems to be well regarded, if not completely well remembered. Renee Zellweger (fresh from Chicago ) and Ewan McGregor (fresh from Moulin Rouge ) tackle roles similar to those made famous by girl-next-door-turned-sex-symbol Doris Day and serious-act...