Movie HighLow

We went High on Psycho, because this is one of those movies that is not just important because film history tells us it is important. Psycho (1960) still has teeth. It still feels dangerous. It still knows how to get under your skin, not just by scaring you, but by making you question where your sympathy is going while you watch it.

That is the real genius of Alfred Hitchcock’...

We went LOW on Madame Web, and this is not one of those sneaky affectionate Lows where we secretly want to defend the movie. This is a real LOW. Madame Web (2024) has psychic spiders, future Spider-Women, a villain trying to prevent his own death, a 2003 setting, Pepsi product placement, Uncle Ben, Peter Parker’s birth, and Dakota Johnson as a clairvoyant paramedic who can see time fold in on itself. That should at least be i...

We went High on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and honestly, this might be the easiest High we have done in a while. Not because there is nothing to talk about, but because the movie knows exactly what it is doing. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) is not just a great animated superhero movie. It is the best Spider-Man movie because it understands Spider-Man as an idea: anyone can wear the mask, everyone gets knocked dow...

We went Low on Ghostbusters (2016), but not for the reason the internet spent a decade screaming about. The problem was never that women were the Ghostbusters. Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones are all funny performers, and there is absolutely a version of this cast that could have worked. The problem is that this movie never feels like it has a strong reason ...

We went High on Bridesmaids, because this is the kind of studio comedy we just do not get enough of anymore. It is loud, gross, awkward, emotional, over-the-top, and built around the kind of female friendship that movies still do not explore as often as they should. Bridesmaids (2011) is not just “women doing a Hangover.” That undersells what makes it work. This is a movie abou...

On this week's Movie HighLow, we went Low on Hook, but this is one of those Lows that comes with a lot of affection. We love so much of this movie. We love Robin Williams as Peter Banning slowly finding his way back to Peter Pan. We love Dustin Hoffman chewing through every syllable as Captain Hook. We love Rufio, Smee, the Lost Boys, the practical Neverland sets, the John Williams score, and the fact that this movie has lived rent...

We went High on Jaws, because of course we did. But the reason Jaws (1975) still works is not just “the shark is scary.” The shark is barely in the first half of the movie. What makes Steven Spielberg’s Jaws an American classic is restraint: character, geography, patience, silence, dread, and the confidence to let the audience imagine more than the movie actually shows.

That is the whole argument of this episode. ...

On this week's Movie HighLow, we went Low on Super Mario Bros., but with a pretty major asterisk: this movie never deserved the hate it got. We won't argue that Super Mario Bros. (1993) is a great adaptation, or that it cleanly captures the spirit of the Nintendo games, or that the story makes sense in any normal way. It is messy, compromised, weird, overdesigned, and occasionally completely insane.

But that is also what makes it s...

On this week's Movie HighLow, we go High on Whiplash because it is one of the rare movies about greatness that does not let greatness off the hook. It looks like an inspirational story about a young jazz drummer pushing past his limits, but the more we talk about it, the darker it gets. Whiplash (2014) is not just asking whether Andrew Neiman becomes great. It is asking what he has to cut out of himself to get there.

That is the re...

The Happening is a bad movie with a genuinely good idea trapped inside it, which might be the most frustrating kind of bad movie. On paper, M. Night Shyamalan making an R-rated eco-horror film about nature turning against humanity should at least be creepy. The planet mounting a defense against us? Plants communicating through airborne neurotoxins? Mass panic spreading through the Northeast? There is a real movie in there somewhere...

Taxi Driver is not great because Travis Bickle is cool, misunderstood, or secretly right. It is great because Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Robert De Niro, and Bernard Herrmann drag us close enough to understand him without ever letting us feel safe around him. That is the central tension of this Movie HighLow episode: Taxi Driver (1976) still feels disturbingly alive because the movie understands loneliness before it becomes ide...

Movie HighLow is back.

After a very reasonable, not-at-all-concerning multi-year pause, Dom and Dee return June 5 with new episodes about the best and worst that cinema has to offer.

Some episodes are HIGH episodes: classics, masterpieces, and movies worth revisiting. Some episodes are LOW episodes: disasters, trainwrecks, and movies where you start wondering if anyone on set knew they were making a movie.

And sometimes, the best m...

This movie never decides what it wants to be.

In The Fanatic, you’ve got a character study, a thriller, and a dark comedy all fighting each other… and none of them really win.

And somehow, that’s what makes it so... fascinating?

We break down:

Why the tone is completely all over the place The strange (but committed) performance from John Travolta How the movie keeps undercutting its own serious moments And why t...

GIGLI is more than a notorious flop. In this episode, we get into why it feels so uniquely humiliating: a tabloid-era Bennifer vehicle, a studio-mangled gangster movie turned awkward rom-com, and a cast stranded inside material that never finds the right tone.

We talk about the film’s broken kidnapping plot, Ben Affleck’s bizarre performance choices, Jennifer Lopez’s underwritten “tough” character, the...

BACK TO THE FUTURE is one of those movies that can feel endlessly familiar and still hit like the first time. In this episode, we get into why Robert Zemeckis’ classic still feels so alive: the perfect Marty McFly and Doc Brown pairing, the airtight script, the escalating stakes, the DeLorean as an all-time great movie image, and a finale that still plays like pure cinematic adrenaline.

We also talk about Michael J. Fox&rsquo...

James Cameron’s TITANIC is one of those movies that became so huge it almost invited backlash, but revisiting it now, the real story is why it still lands. In this episode, we talk about the film as both a massive technical achievement and an unapologetically emotional crowd-pleaser, with a romance that can feel corny and deeply effective at the same time.

We get into James Horner’s haunting score, Cameron’s mix o...

Why do Terry Gilliam’s movies always feel just a little… off?

In this episode, we get into why the film still feels so unsettling and alive, from its warped visual language to the way it turns time travel into something tragic, paranoid, and psychologically unstable.

We talk about Gilliam’s direction and why his surreal style is such a perfect fit for James Cole’s fractured point of view, the film’s ...

Jaws: The Revenge is where one of the greatest blockbusters ever made finally turns into pure franchise absurdity. In this episode, we talk about how the movie turns shark terror into family vendetta nonsense, and why that makes it both embarrassing and weirdly entertaining.

We get into the movie’s wildest choices, from the idea of a shark personally targeting the Brody family to Ellen Brody’s near-psychic connection to...

You ever watch Big as an adult and realize… it’s not the same movie?

This week on Movie HighLow, we revisit Big—the classic Tom Hanks film that somehow hits even harder the older you get. What starts as a fun “kid becomes an adult overnight” story turns into something way deeper.

🎡 A wish gone wrong

🧸 A dream job at a toy company

💔 And a reminder that growing up isn’t always what you thin...