Watch This With Rick Ramos

Franchises, Sex Tapes, & The Future of Film On this week's episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos, Mr. Chavez & I dive back into the archives to remember this 10 year journey. A John Turturro working-class musical, a Sean Penn/Gary Oldman/Ed Harris Hell's Kitchen crime drama, Defining Decades, and a Salute to Martin Scorsese . . . This week we look back to episodes #411-416 in this continuing Journey of...

Superficial Sci-Fi: Rupert Sanders' Ghost in the Shell On this week's episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos, Ibrahim & I dive into Rupert Sanders' 2017 live-action re-imagining of Mamoru Oshii's 1995 Anime-Classic, Ghost in the Shell .  There are so many things that can go wrong with an adaptation and Sanders manages to check many of those boxes. From casting Scarlett Johansson  in the lead role throug...

Cyborg Awakening: Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell From time to time this podcast allows Mr. Chavez & Myself the opportunity to explore new genre's. With the encouragement and recommendations of WatchThis listeners, we have had the opportunity to engage in new experiences a number of times. Some of these new viewings have been from The World of Japanese Anime (Thank You, Mr. Burroughs!). This wee...

Synthetic Sexuality: Alex Garland's Ex Machina AI continues to hold our fascination. This week Mr. Chavez & I dive into Alex Garland's examination of Artificial Intelligence with 2014s  Ex Machina . Set, as Garland describes, "Ten minutes from now,"  Ex Machina  is a fascinating film with exceptional performances from Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, and Alicia Vikander. Few films are able to captur...

Bad Bitch, Cyborg, & Liquid Metal: James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgement Day Go to last week's introduction to James Cameron's  The Terminator . . . fast-forward seven years. Sarah Connor is no longer a "damsel in distress". James Cameron has worked his Sigourney Weaver magical transformation on another heroine, creating one of the great female action stars in all of cinema. Once again, Sarah Co...

Skynet AI 2029: James Cameron's The Terminator  If you grew up in the 1980s, you were living in a decade that would be controlled by raunchy teen sex comedies ( Porky's ,  My Tutor ,  Private Lessons ), John Hughes ( The Breakfast Club ,  16 Candles ,  Ferris Bueller's Day Off ), and the emergence of straight to video. However there was one genre that stood above all others and would forever alter...

Gonzo Hellscape: Terry Gilliam's  Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas In 1998 Director Terry Gilliam - a director whose cinematic career has been fraught with difficulty on the level of Job ( see 2002s  Lost in La Mancha ) was finally successful in bringing to the screen Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 Classic roman á clef  of excess, paranoia, idealism, and disappointment, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Sava...

This week we continue digging through the archives to remember the past ten years of WatchThis W/RickRamos. (Episodes #395 - #410) Great Episodes . . . Great Discussions.  We dive into Mr. Chavez's Favorite Cinematic Decade - The 1990s, as well as looks at Horror both Domestic and International: Dante/Carpenter/Craven & Cronenberg/Kobayashi/Na Hong-jin/Jodorowsky, Oliver Stone, Defining the 80s, b...

Godzilla, the 60s, Hopes, & Monsters  A return to 10 years of WatchThis W/RickRamos (Episodes #384 - 394) - This week we return to the vault to look at one of the greatest movie monsters of all time . . . Toho's Godzilla . We look back on the tumultuous 1960s and the changing face of Cinema, Monsters, and Hopes for the Future. Take a listen and let us know what you think. We can be reached at gond...

Cynicism, Rogan, & What Would Carlin Say? - Remembering 500 Episodes We come back to this celebration as we look through the archives and reminisce and what these episodes have meant to us. Take a listen as we remember the good times, arguments, and great cultural gifts that Pop Culture, Music, Television, and - of course - Cinema have gifted us. It's a fun conversation . . . We hope you enjoy it....

Carry the Fire, Get to the Coast: John Hillcoat's The Road  Bleak & Dark, Hopeless & Beautiful . . . On this week's episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos, Mr. Chavez & I sit down to discuss one of the most brutal and powerful films to emerge from the studio system in decades. In 2009 Director John Hillcoat adapted Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel  The Road . Featuring a career best Viggo Mortensen as "Man"...

Dumbing Down the Future - Mike Judge's  Idiocracy This is an especially fun one! This week Mr. Chavez & I take a trip into a very funny, very frightening, and very likely future. In 2006 20th Century Fox released Mike Judge's  Idiocracy  in a manner that almost guaranteed that no one would ever see it.  . . . but the film would survive. Judge's bleak and pessiimistic vision of the future - the yea...

Dreams with Gilliam, The Rolling Stones Through the Years,  The Silent Voice, The Magic of Tarkovsky, Zappa, A Trio of Very Different Noir On this week's episode Mr. Chavez & I return to reminiscing on 500 shows. We begin with the beauty and magic of Terry Gilliam with  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , through a look at Rock 'N Roll and The Rolling Stones, A beginning series of movies that  de...

Cinematic Karma - Stanley Kubrick's                     A Clockwork Orange  WatchThis fan and BuyMeACoffee contributor, Alan Lamberg, suggests this week's title, Stanley Kubrick's 1971 controversial (masterpiece - ?), A Clockwork Orange. In the late 60s and early 70s the cinematic landscape was changing and evolving into a very different creature. Arthur Penn's  Bonnie & Clyde and Sam Peckinpah's...

Whitey Saves the Day, Jake Won't Go Down, The Beatles Break Up, & More This week Mr. Chavez & I return to a project that began in the middle of last year, releasing an episode recorded many months ago, and exploring the first 500 shows of WatchThis W/RickRamos . It's taken some time to get back to this, but we find ourselves returning to Memory Lane and plan on spending the next few months pepperi...

David Lynch: The Art of Dark Dreams  This week Mr. Chavez & I remember and say farewell to one of the greats of Cinema - David Lynch (01/20/46 - 01/15/25). Goodbye, Mr. Lynch; we were fortunate to have you.  For those of you who would like to donate to this undying labor of love, you can do so with a contribution at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/watchrickramos - Anything and Everything is appreciat...

When Evil Men Remember: Joshua Oppenheimer, Christina Cynn, & an Anonymous Indonesian Director's The Act of Killing This week Mr. Chavez & I go up river for one of the most powerful, depressing, and meaningful documentaries ever made,  The Act of Killing . This 2012 documentary explores the Indonesian mass killings, rapes, and tortures that occurred between 1965 and 1966 of alleged Communist Chine...

Angry White Male: Joel Schumacher's  Falling Down Looking at the world - past, present, and future - this week Mr. Chavez & I sit down to watch and discuss Joel Schumacher's 1993 look at American male angst, disgust, and disspointment, Falling Down . As we "welcome" a return of the Republicans to political power, Schumacher's film is a brutal look at the disspointment of the American Dream. Michae...

Detective or Pervert: David Lynch's Blue Velvet  This week Mr. Chavez & I dive into The World of David Lynch. Amazingly, Lynch has been able to survive and thrive in the Hollywood System for over four decades. From his beginnings with a labor of love called Eraserhead (1977) thru critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for 1980s The Elephant Man, and a colossal failure attempting an adaptation of...

Dracula Done to Death - Robert Egger's Nosferatu This week Mr. Chavez & I run to our local movie theaters to watch, contemplate, and bring to you Robert Egger's end of the year re-imagining of the F.W. Murnau Classic, Nosferatu . Re-makes are notoriously difficult to pull of and Egger's has his hands full with one of the greatest films in the History of Cinema. There is a great deal to admire in t...

Time Destroys Everything - Gaspar Noé's Irreversible We're closing in on our two final films in our  "Dark Cinema" showcase. This week we look at Gaspar Noé's 2002 controversial and troubling film, Irreversible . Arguably one of the most difficult viewing experiences ever unleashed on movie-watching audiences, Noé's exploration on storytelling (a backwards playing narrative) could have easily been...

Perv with a Pen - Terry Zwigoff's Crumb This week we race back to 1994 with one of the great documentaries of the modern era, Terry Zwigoff's portrait of underground comic artist, Robert Crumb. A simple profile of the artist and the polarizing reaction to his work alone would have made for an interesting and enjoyable film; Zwigoff's decision to focus on Crumb's extended family (two brothers and m...

Blood, Metal, C*m - David Cronenberg's CRASH   For Darkness in Popular Cinema it's difficult to find a director that reaches deeper and more disturbing images than Canadian auteur, David Cronenberg. 1997s  Crash is - arguably - his most divisive, polarizing, and controversial film. Winner of a special Cannes Jury Award (which jury president, Francis Ford Coppola refused to hand to Cronenberg),  Cr...

To Neither Have Nor Hold - Tod Browning's The Unknown On this week's episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos, Mr. Chavez & I look back to 1927 for one of the great Actor/Director collaborations - Lon Chaney & Tod Browning. With The Unknown , Chaney & Browning would create one of the most disturbing and beautifully realized films of The Silent Era. Browning's years spent as a youth in circuses and carniva...

Wall Street Chainsaw Massacre - Mary Harron's American Psycho On this week's episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos, Mr. Chavez & I take a look at director Mary Harron's 2000 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho . A controversial and polarizing film that has gained cultural and critical praise in the nearly quarter century since the film's release (and the 1991 publication of the novel), we...