Citizen Dame

We continue our horror musical marathon with the 2004 adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, a film that tells the story of how a musical theater kid living in a sewer turns into a incel. Starring Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum, the film divided audiences when it came out, and still divides the Dames to this day!

*Note that Lauren was incorrect: the 1925 silent film version of the story actually used two-strip...

This week, we continue our journey through horror musicals with the 1986 film, Little Shop of Horrors. Adapted from the Broadway musical that was adapted from the 1960 Roger Corman movie, Frank Oz directs this funny movie about a man-eating alien plant named Audrey II and the sweet, unassuming amateur botanist who gets wrapped up in "Twooie's" deadly plot. Rick Moranis is Seymour in his first leading role opposite a who's who cast ...

This week we continue celebrating Tim Curry AND ushering in Spooky Movie Season at the same time with the 1975 cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the longest-running film of all time, a young couple's car breaks down near an old castle in the middle of Ohio. When they knock on the door to use the telephone, they have no idea that they will spend a wild night in the company of a transvestite scientist from the planet Tr...

We continue our celebration of Tim Curry with the 1985 whodunnit homage/parody/board game adaptation Clue, directed by Jonathan Lynn, written by John Landis and Lynn, and starring a fantastic cast of comedic character actors as strangers who meet in an old dark house only to be swept up into a murder mystery. In a cast full of GOATs (including Madeline Kahn and Michael McKean), Tim Curry manages to make the film his own as Wadswort...

This week we switch gears and begin a memorial series dedicated to the icon, Tim Curry. And we're starting off with his 1996 musical comedy, Muppet Treasure Island. Directed by Brian Henson and starring all your favorite Muppets, this adaptation of the Robert Louis Stephenson novel casts Curry as the one and only Long John Silver. In this episode, we talk generally about Curry's career, his much-rumored affair with Miss Piggy, and ...

This episode, the Dames talk Dolly Parton, the 1980s, and...Turkish Oil Wrestling!

In Steel Magnolias, based on Robert Harling's play of the same name, Dolly plays Truvy, the owner of a home-based beauty salon in a little Louisiana town that becomes the center of the friendships, love stories, and heartaches of a close-knit group of friends. Featuring a fantastic cast that includes Sally Field, Darryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, Julia...

While we were on a break, the world lost some legends. This month, we are remembering Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. First, we talk about Dolly's 1982 musical comedy, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Parton stars as Miss Mona, the proprietor of a brothel known as the Chicken Ranch, a beloved house in rural Texas that comes under attack when TV personality Melvin P. Thorpe (Dom DeLuise) launches a moral crusade. Burt Reynolds stars...

We're back with a final alien invasion film and this one's a doozy: Steven Spielberg's post-9/11 adaptation of War of the Worlds, starring Tom Cruise as a Regular Guy who has to save his family when vicious aliens attack Earth. Of all the films we've done this month, this is both the most realistic and most frightening.

We will be on break for the month of August, but shall return with an entire month dedicated to Mel Brooks (!) as...

We continue our month of aliens attacking America! with another 1996 gem, Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!

Based on the Topps trading card series from 1962, this hilarious, satirical alien invasion movie follows separate groups of Americans who all have very different experiences when Martians arrive and start indiscriminately killing everyone with their death rays. The movie stars Jack Nicholson in two unrelated roles, plus Glenn Close,...

This week we're finishing up our month of supposedly straight movies that are very gay, by talking all about the 2002 film, Bend it Like Beckham. from director Gurinder Chadha. Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley star as two soccer players, one from a traditional Sikh family and the other with an overbearing, gender-enforcing mother, who connect through a women's team coached by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. They're supposedly fighting ove...

Our month of "straight movies that are totally gay" continues with the 1954 western, Johnny Guitar.

Joan Crawford stars as saloon owner Vienna in a small southwestern town. When a heist leaves a man dead, his sister Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) declares war on Vienna and local gang leader the Dancin' Kid (Scott Grady). But Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) is there to...help? This definitely totally straight western from Nicholas Ray ...

Happy Pride! This Pride Month, we're talking movies that involve the love that dare not speak its name...but come really, really close. First up in our homoerotic quartet is Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break (1991), starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze as two dudes from opposite sides (one an undercover FBI agent, the other a surfer and possible criminal) who come together over their love of adrenaline and increasingly intense (but...

We bring our first Bad Movies We Love series to a close with the best - and by that we mean worst - of the bunch, 2019's Replicas. Keanu Reeves stars as William Foster, a neuroscientist working on a project to transfer the minds of recently deceased soldiers into synthetic brains. Why? Who knows! It's all about science or something! But then tragedy strikes and William, along with his twitchy but faithful sidekick Ed (Thomas Middle...

Next up in our Terrible Movies We Love month is the Wachowskis' divisively weird Jupiter Ascending, starring Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones, a Russian immigrant who discovers she's the reincarnation of the matriarch of an intergalactic family who happens to own Earth, and she's being protected by sky-rollerblading space werewolf Caine Wise (Channing Tatum). And that's just the first twenty minutes.

But is Jupiter Ascending really a te...

This week, we continue our favorite "bad" action movies with a visit to the Hotel Artemis, a near-future dystopian flick with a convoluted plot, varying levels of quality in its action sequences, and cheesy dialogue. Plus a stacked cast that includes Sterling K. Brown, Jodie Foster, Dave Bautista, Brian Tyree Henry, Sofia Boutella, Charlie Day, Zachary Quinto, and Jeff Goldblum.

Hotel Artemis was written and directed by Drew Pearce...

We return this week to kick off our "Terrible Movies We Love" month, which is exactly as it says on the tin. We begin with Van Helsing, Stephen Sommers' bizarre attempt to bring Universal monsters into the franchise era. Starring Hugh Jackman in the TITULAR ROLE as monster-hunter Gabriel Van Helsing, with Richard Roxburgh chewing the scenery as Count Dracula and Kate Beckinsale's inexplicable accent as Anna Valarious, Van Helsing i...

This week, the Dames are finishing up our Month of Meg with one of Meg Ryan's directorial achievements: What Happens Later.

Ryan stars alongside David Duchovny as Willa Davis and Bill Davis, two long ago lovers who unexpectedly reunite while trapped in a regional airport during a snowstorm. Over the course of one very long night, they talk about their erstwhile relationship, where they are now in life, and their hopes for the futur...