Now Playing - The Movie Review Podcast

You Only Live Twice

Daniel “007” Craig loses faith in his abilities to solve a third Knives Out Mystery after murdered monsignor Josh Brolin rises from the grave in Wake Up Dead Man. Is Sheriff Mila Kunis right to slap the cuffs on Josh O’Connor after the doubting priest confesses to a violent past?  Or should she be looking at suspicious parishioners like bitter Glenn Close, jilted Jeremy Renner, blocked writer Andrew Scott, grabb...

Feliz Na’vi Dads 

Pandora will be turned into Fire and Ash if Giovanni Ribisi and Edie Falco learn the secret to breathing the planet’s toxic air from feral human Spider (Jack Champion). Can adoptive father Sam Worthington protect “monkey boy” from being reclaimed by bio-parent Stephen Lang, or getting whacked by his grieving wife Zoe Saldana?  And who exactly gave birth to 76-year-old “teenager” Sigourney Weaver? Sullys never quit...

Charlie’s (Avenging) Angels 

Rohan Campbell goes from ending the Halloween franchise to taking an axe to Christmas in the 2025 reboot of Silent Night, Deadly Night.  Is the traumatized orphan crazy for wanting to wear a Santa suit and murder festive folks in small-town America?  Or is that gruff voice in his head only interested in The Naughty - child snatchers, heartless foster moms, wife murderers, and a White Power rally found k...

Where A Kid Can Be A Corpse

Josh Hutcherson plays different hunger games at a second pizzeria that has child abduction and possessed animatronics on the menu in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Are Chica, Foxy, Bonnie, and Freddy Fazzbear even more lethal now that they’re controlled by The Marionette, a forgotten telepathic mascot out to make neglectful parents pay?  And will crabby teacher Wayne Knight (Seinfeld) give an “F” to heroine ...

Grindhouse Day

Five friends stranded at a sunken mining town must survive Until Dawn if they hope to escape a fatal time warp created by head shrinker Peter Stormare (Fargo). Does director David F. Sandberg (Annabelle Creation) help his horror movie feel more like a video game by hitting the reset button every time his cast is violently killed off, giving the characters another chance to go back and make different choices (yet alwa...

Father Knows Beast

Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) fulfills his dream to bring Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic novel Frankenstein to life as a 2025 Netflix creation. Does Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight) play God just to get back at bad dad Charles Dance (Golden Child), or to impress failed nun Mia Goth (X), or because Christoph Waltz (Spectre) has funded the perfect mad scientist lab to fry up bits of fallen soldiers and executed prisoners?  And...

America’s Got Tumult

Glen Powell (Twisters) follows in the footsteps of Arnold Schwarzenegger by continuing the weird flex he began on a lethal reality show called The Running Man. Will TV producer Josh Brolin (Avengers: Endgame) cancel his star contestant before he sparks a political uprising with prepper Michael Cera (Arrested Development)? And does Stephen King’s downer dystopian novel from 1982 still reward audiences in 2025 wh...

Get to da Yowcha!  

The Predator has left behind his typical prey on Earth to hunt a new trophy in the Badlands of the deadliest planet in the universe. But after eight movies, is the masked alien at last ready to be the hero of his own franchise, and beat a band of Weyland-Yutani robots to a massive, unkillable monster?  And are Elle Fanning (Super 8) and a spitting space monkey the tools needed to navigate all the poisonous flora...

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Motherf*ckers

Before the Predator conducts his 2025 theatrical hunt in the Badlands, his animated counterparts are hosting a contest on Hulu where the winner is proclaimed Killer of Killers. How much competition will a Viking mother, an exiled Japanese brother, and an aspiring WWII pilot be for the homicidal aliens once they’re ripped away from historical battles and transported to a space arena?  An...

What If…. Stan Lee was replaced by George Romero?

Now Playing Podcast has been overrun by Marvel Zombies just in time for Halloween, and somehow it’s all up to Jersey brat Kamala Khan (aka Ms Marvel) to save the day. Can she transmit an S.O.S. to allies in space before Shang-Chi, Red Guardian, Spider-Man, Thor, Riri “Ironheart” Williams,  and dozens of other Avengers are overtaken by an undead horde commanded by Scarlet Witch?  And...

The Enemy of The Entity Is My Friend

Brock, Arnie, and Stuart are at last ready to have The Final Reckoning with the eighth Mission: Impossible film, as well as its daredevil star, Tom Cruise. Does the world still need Ethan Hunt to dangle from dogfighting airplanes, dive solo into deep-sea submarine wrecks, or impersonate others in lookalike masks?  Or would it be better to let artificial intelligence take over the planet and remo...

My So-Called Artificial Life

Jared Leto aims to be a permanent part of the Tron universe by reconfiguring his rock star image into cyber-soldier Ares. But is he right to have bad feelings about the commands of generational villains Evan Peters (X-Men Days of Future Past) and Gillian Anderson (X-Files)? Or should he follow the directives of Flynn fangirl Greta Lee (Past Lives), and return to the Grid of the 1980s to celebrate Depech...

You’ve Got Plague 

Tom Hanks is back as Robert Langdon, this time recovering from amnesia in an Italian hospital while the clock ticks down to the release of a deadly virus. But why did Ron Howard skip a novel to make Dan Brown’s fourth book, Inferno, the conclusion to the movie trilogy? And is Felicity Jones (Rogue One) any help stopping a madman obsessed with Dante, or aiding the symbologist as he tries to top The Da Vinci Code a...

Catch Me if you Conclave  

Ron Howard follows up his biggest box office hit with a 2009 Da Vinci Code sequel that sends Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor racing through Rome on a mission to solve more ancient riddles. Will taking time for some Vatican cardio in between his Louvre lectures make the Harvard symbologist fit enough to stop an Illuminati bomb plot?  Arnie, Jason, and Justin try not to suffocate in St. Peter’s Square as they d...

Joe Versus the Vatican

Symbologist Robert Langdon made his big-screen debut in The Da Vinci Code, the controversial adaptation of a Dan Brown bestseller that risked turning art history into a global conspiracy and created a PR nightmare for the Catholic Church. With Tom Hanks rocking the most unpopular haircut since Samson, and director Ron Howard treating every line like it came straight from the Book of Revelation, this 2006 thri...

Step Brothers 

Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence asks audiences to take a Long Walk in Stephen King’s shoes for the 2025 movie adaptation of the horror writer’s 1979 dystopian novel. Why has Mark Hamill gone to the Dark Side, using brute force to make 50 teenage boys march down America’s post-apocalyptic highways until only one is left standing?  And who in this fresh-faced cast, which includes the latest Karate Kid and the “A...

The Warren Reports

Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson have been Conjuring stories of demonic possession on movie screens for the last 12 years. Will their career as the preeminent paranormal investigators of the 1960s and 70s end in tragedy now that a Pennsylvanian family needs their help fighting off an axe-wielding ghost in 1986?  And can Ed and Lorraine keep shielding adult daughter Judy from a strangulating spirit tucked inside a ...

Window of Opportunity

Stephen King didn’t write The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, but this 2003 TV movie attempts to complete the picture of his haunted house, Rose Red. Was the place born from the sin of kinky Steven Brand (Hellraiser: Revelations), who delights in tying up and torturing his new bride and comely maids?  Or is the mansion on the side of the wronged women, and helping Ellen (soap star Lisa Brenner) and her “dark lady” co...

Bringing Down The House

Stephen King invited audiences back to network television in 2002 for a three-night tour of his haunted house, Rose Red. But did the author successfully refurbish Shirley Jackson’s classic Hill House tale by having an autistic girl be the one to stoke the appetite of a soul-eating Seattle mansion? Or is sitcom star Nancy Travis working from an outdated blueprint as she sends five paranormal investigators dow...