F This Movie!

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 9 May 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Review: TWO WOMEN

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 8 May 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

More like Two Horny Women.

Summer movie season is here! Meryl Streep’s autocratic Miranda Priestly returns in The Devil Wears Prada 2! Star Wars’ newest pint-sized star makes his big-screen debut in The Mandalorian and Grogu! Christopher Nolan brings civilization’s most enduring heroic narrative to life in The Odyssey! And, of course, Canadian writer/director Chloé Robichaud remakes the ‘70s sex farce, Two Women in Gold! Adapted by Catherine Léger from her stage play — itself adapted from the original film; try to keep up — Two Women follows Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) and Violette (Laurence Leboeuf), a pair of restless housewives who embark on a shared journey of sexual rejuvenation. As they bone their way through every plumber and handyman in Quebec, they’ll rekindle the joie de vivre that domesticity once stripped away. And while it may lack the intellectual heft of cousins like Jean-Luc Goddard’s Masculine Féminin or Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Robichaud’s film is witty and charming enough to break up the coming onslaught of blockbuster tentpoles.

We begin with Violette, home on maternity leave and desperate to convince her husband (Félix Moati as Benoit) that the mysterious cawing sound she’s hearing — which evolves into one of the film’s better running gags — is the couple next door having performatively loud intercourse. The truth is way less sexy, unfortunately, as Florence reveals that she and her partner (Mani Soleymanlou as David) haven’t been at it in over a year. Florence’s libido has been dulled by anti-depressants, and David has been happy to trade less action in the bedroom for a more stable and emotionally balanced partner. It turns out Violette can relate: She and Benoit haven’t made inroads in that department since the birth of their daughter, most likely because Benoit’s been having an affair with his colleague, Eli (Juliette Gariépy). As David busies himself with their co-op’s greenhouse — the source of some jokes about carbon neutrality trends that would have been funnier around 2014 — Florence sets about getting her groove back. Vivian follows her lead, and middle-aged sex hijinks ensure.

Anchored by performances endearing enough to make us sympathize with a pair of serial philanderers and their dim-witted husbands, Two Women explores everything from double standards in gender dynamics to the “unnatural” arrangement that is sexual monogamy. Léger’s screenplay — presumably borrowed in part from Claude Fournier and Marie-José Raymond’s original — is brisk and upbeat, loaded with clever and disarming observations about modern marriage. There’s a blunt pragmatism to each character’s sensibilities that helps the film avoid many of the melodramatic confrontations typical of the genre, which becomes a more impressive — and infinitely funnier — accomplishment as each of their perversions is ultimately dismissed as an acceptable human weakness. Even the strumpet Eli resists easy stereotyping: One of the film’s best moments comes when she scoffs at Benoit’s insistence that he’d leave his wife for her if she asked, reassuring him that she has no real feelings for him and is simply using him for his pleasantly-shaped manhood.

It’s that kind of unsentimental comedy that keeps Two Women delightfully light and airy, but it’s hard not to feel like a film that hums as vibrantly as this one couldn’t do with a bit more hard-nosed dissection of the human nature it clearly understands so well. There’s a flippancy to its handling of heavier topics like suicide and sexual assault where a more socially-contentious approach might have helped elevate things just a tad. To wit: Florence and Vivian’s karaoke night out is interrupted when one of them slashes her wrist with a broken beer bottle, and a later sequence finds Daniel mixing anti-depressants with alcohol in what his emergency room doctor describes as a “cry for help.” Both incidents are dismissed without too much interrogation. That said, perhaps Two Women deserves some credit for not overextending itself for the sake of lofty ambitions. If you’re wondering whether or not I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth on this one, you’d be right! Perhaps I’m just as fickle and contradictory as the hot messes that make up the cast of this film. Go figure.

Yeah, I’ve rethought it, and I’m actually okay with where Two Women lands: There are no self-righteous proclamations about right and wrong, no short-sighted dismissals of any one way of life or another, and no second act misunderstandings that reduce the whole thing to a half-hearted genre exercise. See? You just watched me self-correct in real time. Okay. Let’s reset: While there’s very little about Two Women that will stick with you the next day — we need a term for a movie that holds a spot in your Letterboxd diary that you’ve completely memory-holed by the time you’re making your year-end lists — it’s perfectly acceptable for an evening’s diversion. In a summer movie season sure to be defined by high-stakes franchise IP like Toy Story 5 and Supergirl, Steven Spielberg's return to science fiction in Disclosure Day, and, I don’t know, whatever the hell Insidious: Out of the Further is (I’ll admit I lost track of that series a few movies ago; is “the Further” like the Upside-Down? I lost track of Stranger Things, too), there’s nothing wrong with an evening’s diversion.

Two Women hits select U.S. theaters on Friday, May 8th.

24 Hours of Movies: 24-Hour Movies!

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 7 May 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Patrick Bromley
Let's spend the day watching movies that take place in a day.

10am - His Girl Friday (1940, dir. Howard Hawks)

We'll kick things off with what might be the greatest (certainly the fastest) screwball comedy of all time, in which Cary Grant attempts to win back ex-wife Rosalind Russell over the course of a day while both use the Power of the Press to stop a convicted man from being unfairly executed. This was one of the movies that first made me fall in love with classic comedies and it's never lost its power no matter how many times I see it. It's always still just as fast-paced and funny as it always was, only now I get to pick out a new favorite line or delivery each time I see it. When Erika threw me a real-deal 24-hour movie festival for my 40th birthday, I made the mistake of programming this one in the morning when I was already too tired to keep up with it. Better to let it start us out.

11:45am - Quick Change (1990, dir. Bill Murray & Howard Franklin)

One of the great unsung comedies of the early '90s, this poison love letter to New York stars Bill Murray, Geena Davis, and Randy Quaid as a group of bank robbers who can't seem to get out of the city no matter how hard they try. Like Martin Scorsese's After Hours (the best One Crazy Night movie), this one has our characters encountering a bunch of colorful characters, most memorably Tony Shaloub's cab driver. Quick Change is such a masterpiece of deadpan absurdity that I know it's going to keep the energy and laughs of His Girl Friday rolling along.

1:30pm - Training Day (2001, dir. Antoine Fuqua

Antoine Fuqua's best movie follows a day in the life of corrupt cop Denzel Washington (who won the Oscar for his work here) and new trainee Ethan Hawke as they do all kinds of potentially shady shit together. This is screenwriter David Ayer mining familiar territory about Los Angeles and bad cops but it's sold more effectively than usual thanks to good location photography, Fuqua's direction, and especially Washington and Hawke (who was also nominated for an Oscar) at the center. For whatever reason I'm still rocking my standard def snapcase DVD for this one; I should probably upgrade to the 4K at some point.

3:30pm - Clerks (1994, dir. Kevin Smith)

In the interest of lightening things up after Training Day, let's watch Kevin Smith's first (and still best?) movie, following the day in the life and work of a put-upon convenience store worker and his best friend. Smith tries his hardest to be edgy and there's obviously some button-pushing stuff that hasn't aged great -- this is a 30-year old movie, after all -- but at its center is an ultimately sweet movie about male friendship. It's also helped by the fact that this is the movie in which Smith leans hardest into his lack of visual sense, meaning the form actually suits the material. The kid in me who first fell in love with Smith and his work via this movie will never not love it.

5:30pm - Barbershop (2002, dir. Tim Story)

One of the great hangout movies of the early 2000s, Tim Story's original Barbershop puts together a fantastic ensemble cast for a day in the life and business of a Chicago barbershop as its owner (Ice Cube) debates selling it. There's a really fun group of characters and a real hangout vibe that makes this one easy to revisit, as evidenced by the multiple sequels that return to the barbershop without ever working as well as the original. I actually think Barbershop will be a good lead-in for our next movie.

7:30pm - Do the Right Thing (1989, dir. Spike Lee)

The true Best Picture of 1989 is maybe the greatest 24-hour movie of all time. Sure, it gets pretty heavy for a Primetime Pizza slot but just because there is tragedy at the end of the film shouldn't discount how entertaining it is. That's a big part of what makes Do the Right Thing such a masterpiece: it's more alive than almost any other movie. That there's any debate as to whether or not this is Spike Lee's greatest movie -- it's between this and Malcolm X -- is proof that he's one of the all-time greats.

9:30pm - Crank (2006, dir. Mark Neveldine/Brian Taylor)

We're not going to do a traditional overnight full of weird stuff and Italian horror, but that doesn't mean we can't program some mindless trash as we head into that section of our marathon. That brings us to Crank, the Neveldine/Taylor joint that would probably be my favorite Jason Statham action movie if not for Crank 2 and Wrath of Man. He plays a hit man who's been poisoned and has to keep his heart rate up so he doesn't die; somehow the movie is four times stupider than it sounds, but in a sublime and often offensive way. That there aren't more movies like Crank is both a shame and proof that there absolutely should not be more movies like Crank.

11pm - Take Me Home Tonight (2011, dir. Michael Dowse)

A good excuse to program a Brian Saur favorite. Really just Can't Hardly Wait for a slightly older set, the movie focuses on a college graduate (Topher Grace) who gets invited to what is a party doubling as a high school reunion in the 1988, I'm assuming so there can be a bunch of '80s music on the soundtrack and jokes about the fashion. This is almost one of those CastMaker movies, with early roles for Theresa Palmer, Chris Pratt, Demetri Martin, and Seth Gabel, plus more recognizable faces like Grace, Anna Faris, Michelle Trachtenberg (RIP), Dan Fogler, and Lucy Punch. The movie didn't make enough of a dent to launch anyone to stardom, but it's the perfect sort of breezy comedy that will go down easy as exhaustion sets in.

12:45am - Night of the Living Dead (1990, dir. Tom Savini)

We should still watch some horror during our overnight, and while I could probably program George A. Romero's original zombie classic into this spot I'd kind of like to rewatch Tom Savini's 1990 remake, which I checked out back in October when Sony released the uncut 4K (it's not very different) and liked way more than I remembered. Tony Todd (RIP) is a particular standout as he so often was. The added gore doesn't amount to much, but there's a cool fade from black and white into color at the opening that has been restored and I'm happy to have a version closer to what Savini intended.

2:30am - Judgment Night (1993, dir. Stephen Hopkins)

During the overnight section of our marathon, we should watch a movie about one of the worst overnights imaginable: being hunted down by Denis Leary in the scariest parts of Chicago and being friends with Jeremy Piven. This movie, once famous only for its soundtrack, has been rediscovered by the right kinds of audiences over the last 10 years and gained appreciated for what a effective thriller it is. It would probably be Stephen Hopkins' best movie if not for Predator 2. Hopkins bump!

4:30am - The Warriors (1979, dir. Walter Hill)

One of the best One Night Only movies ever made, Walter Hill's dystopian street gang epic focuses on The Warriors, a gang framed for murder who have to get back to their turf in NYC as every other gang in the city hunts them down. It's literally one of the best premises for a movie ever, probably because it's based on a classical Greek text. The scene with Michael Beck and Deborah Van Valkenburgh on the train is one of my absolute favorites.

6am - Wet Hot American Summer (2001, dir. David Wain)

This one doesn't need to take place over the span of a single day -- there's enough here to fill an entire summer -- but one of the jokes is that it does. Made mostly with members of the MTV sketch comedy group The State but adding heavy hitters like Janeane Garofalo, Amy Poehler, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, and Paul Rudd (this was the movie that taught us all how funny he is), Wet Hot is, joke for joke, performance for performance, still the funniest comedy of the 2000s. We'll be laughing even harder than usual because we should, by now, be delirious.

7:30am - The Paper (1994, dir. Ron Howard)

Ron Howard's most underrated movie, The Paper focus on a manic 24 hours in the life of an editor at the New York Sun (Michael Keaton) and the various people with whom he works (Glenn Close, Robert Duvall) and lives (Marisa Tomei). The 24-hour ticking clock isn't just a gimmick here but actually part of the plot, which involves Keaton desperately trying not just to get a story, but to get it right for the morning edition. While not one of the great journalism movies, Ron Howard does manage to conjure up a kind of electric energy and maintain it for the length of the film. It will be like starting our morning by chugging three Monster energy drinks, which doesn't sound half bad.

9:30am - Dazed and Confused (1993, dir. Richard Linklater)

Showing this to one of my film classes recently is what inspired this list. Richard Linklater's ode to growing up in the late 1970s might possibly be the greatest hangout movie of all time. I resisted it for years because I thought it was little more than a stoner comedy, and while there is a lot of weed smoking in the film (a fact of which I became acutely aware while showing it to a class), that's more a period detail than a source of humor in the movie. The cast of future stars and familiar faces is insane, the soundtrack is wall-to-wall bangers (at least in the context of the movie; I wouldn't listen to a lot of these songs on their own), the details perfectly observed. The ending of this movie captures exactly the feeling I want to evoke at the end of our 24-hour marathon. Let's go get Aerosmith tickets.

FTM 819: MOBSTERS

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 6 May 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick and Adam Riske rose from nothing to rule everything.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.

Also discussed this episode: The Drama (2026), Firewall (2006), Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (2006), Big Night (1996), As Good As It Gets (1997), The Fox and the Hound (1981), Fly Away Home (1996), Happily Ever After (1993), The Bride! (2026), The Face With Two Left Feet (1979), Dolly (2026)

Fifty Before '50: HOLD THAT GHOST (1941)

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 5 May 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by JB

Another seminal film has slipped through my brain cracks...

Although I count Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein among my very favorite horror films—I usually begin every Scary Movie Month with a rewatch—I remained in the dark about Hold That Ghost, the film every A&C book and documentary claimed as the inspiration for much of the “Lou Costello is so funny when he is scared” shtick in the Frankenstein picture.

Because I have seen ...Meet Frankenstein so many times, the earlier Hold That Ghost came across as a sort of "alternate dimension" version: In Hold That Ghost, the Bud Abbott character is named Chuck, leading to scene after scene of Costello yelling for his friend to come to his aid with “Oh, Chuck!” In ...Meet Frankenstein, Abbott's character is named Chick, leading to a similar chorus of Costello screaming, “Oh, Chick!” This similarity has to have been intentional.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Chuck Murray and Ferdy Jones (Bud Abbott and Lou Costello) are gas station attendants who work a one-night only gig as waiters at a fancy nightclub. The nightclub is frequented by gangsters like Moose Matson (William B. Davidson) and features top-notch entertainment, including bandleader Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters.

The next day, Moose stops at Chuck and Ferdy’s service station for gas and a wash. He is spotted by authorities who give chase; Moose is fatally shot. An odd codicil in his will bequeaths his entire estate to whoever is with him when he dies. Guess who is hiding in the backseat of the car? Chuck and Ferdy inherit Moose’s rundown tavern where, it is rumored, he hid his fortune. The tavern seems to be haunted. Other gangsters arrive. Will Chuck and Ferdy find the money before they are killed?

There’s a lot to like in this modest little film. Abbott & Costello are at the top of their game, especially in the bits involving physical comedy: At one point, Costello does a comic dance on a wet floor that is a highlight of the film. The supporting cast is also terrific: Mischa Auer shows up as an insufferable head waiter. Richard Carlson, still twelve years from making It Came from Outer Space and The Creature from the Black Lagoon at Universal, plays a nerdy doctor. Evelyn Ankers, who costarred in Universal’s The Wolf Man that same year, is featured as Carlson’s love interest. And Joan Davis, later to star in television’s I Married Joan, appears as an accident-prone waitress and Costello’s love interest. This is a great cast.

The production history of Hold That Ghost is fascinating. Earlier in 1941, the duo made Buck Privates for Universal Pictures, which became one of the studio’s highest grossing pictures to date. Although Abbott & Costello had nearly completed Hold That Ghost, that film was shelved so that Universal could cash in on Buck Privates’ success with another service comedy, In the Navy, which was also a big moneymaker. Both Buck Privates and In the Navy featured the Andrews Sisters. Preview audiences for Hold That Ghost asked why the film didn’t also feature the singing trio, so Universal put Hold That Ghost back into production, spending an additional $150,000 to add “bookend” scenes in a nightclub... featuring the Andrews Sisters.

It seems significant that Abbott & Costello made this movie, a horror comedy, for Universal in 1941 because, at that time, Universal had reached an impasse. Except for The Wolf Man, which would be released later in 1941, their famous horror films had run their course with sequel after sequel. Also, England responded negatively to American horror films and briefly banned them. Universal and other studios started to downplay the horror content of their horror films, focusing instead on newspaper movies (dogged reporters investigating something fishy), gangster pictures (criminals swindling people under the guise of monsters and ghosts), and horror comedies (tongue-in-cheek haunted house pictures like the Bob Hope remake of The Cat and the Canary). This trend reaches its head-scratching apotheosis in Hold That Ghost: Is it a comedy? A musical? A gangster movie? A haunted house picture? Is it a documentary about gas stations and the brave men who work there?

The answer is yes.

The new Kino-Lorber 4K disc looks great and contains two terrific audio commentaries, which complement each other nicely: Alan K. Rode focuses on production history and Samm Deighan focuses on the film as a whole. This is my first commentary by Deighan, but I was very impressed. She is both knowledgeable and conversational, two qualities that are sometimes at odds in other audio commentaries. I see here that Deighan produces special features for Vinegar Syndrome and hosts the “Twitch of the Death Nerve” podcast. I look forward to listening to more of her commentaries.

Friday Night Double Features Vol. 66

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 4 May 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley

Ten new double features to watch after your team is eliminated from the NBA Playoffs.

Double Feature 1:

Adam: #1: American Graffiti (1973)
Patrick: #2: Dazed and Confused (1993)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Can’t Hardly Wait, The Outsiders
Patrick: Theme: Castmakers

Patrick: I like these movies in which the cast is totally stacked with up-and-comers, but no one quite knows it yet except maybe a casting agent who is very, very good at his or her job. I haven’t seen American Graffiti in a number of years so I’m excited to revisit it at our theater. It’s a movie I’ve always respected more than actually liked, but I get smarter (in some ways) as I get older and I learn to see things in older movies that maybe I didn’t see the first time or two. Dazed and Confused is a movie I kind of rejected early on because I thought I was rejecting the fan base, but it gets better every time I see it. Maybe the best hangout movie ever?

Adam: This is an amazing, perfect double feature with two movies I love. On my last viewing of American Graffiti, I realized it’s one of my favorite movies (probably top 25 or somewhere in that range). I have a real soft spot for movies set in the early '60s like that and Dogfight. Plus, the wall-to-wall soundtrack omg. Dazed and Confused is a great pairing with it since they’re both up all night hangout movies. I understand what you’re saying about rejecting the fan base initially for Dazed and Confused. I always loved the movie but also didn’t think I was hip enough for it until I finally saw the movie in my late teens. It came out when I was in middle school and I remember my first awareness of it was seeing the trailer before Rookie of the Year, oddly enough. The joke about Martha Washington having a big bowl waiting for George went way over my head. I thought they were talking about soup or chili or something. Fun fact: When I worked at Blockbuster, our copy of Dazed and Confused was never in because it was repeatedly stolen.

Patrick: Same for my Blockbuster!! It must have been a national phenomenon.

Double Feature 2:

Patrick: #1: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Adam: #2: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Serenity, Veronica Mars, Downton Abbey
Adam: Theme: I’m Lost Because I Didn’t Watch the TV Show

Adam: I’ve seen Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and admire it at arm’s length. I know enough about the show through osmosis and am familiar enough with David Lynch’s vibe to “get it” kinda? I don’t know. I’m sure I’m still missing a lot. I thought this would be a fun theme because I remember my friends back in 1998 wanting to see The X-Files movie on opening night but I suggested we see The Truman Show a second time because I hadn’t seen any episodes of The X-Files. That was rude of me. Besides, it was opening night of Mulan so we should’ve gone to that. Is The X-Files: Fight the Future a movie a novice could get anything out of? I’ve always wanted to see it but not enough to watch the television show. P.S. I don’t like the subtitle Fight the Future. It reminds me of the moment in Saturday Night Fever where Travolta says “Fuck the Future” and his boss is all “No, Tony, the future fucks you.”

Patrick: The girl I was dating in high school took me to Fire Walk With Me opening night and I had never seen the show and felt completely lost. Now I’ve seen the show multiple times but that’s not why I’ve grown to love FWWM; I think that has more to do with seeing more David Lynch and vibing with it in a way I couldn’t have as a kid. X-Files: Fight the Future is a different thing because the show is more of a blind spot for me, despite always wanting to watch it and working through the first season more than once. I skipped it in theaters and watched it on video, where it did almost nothing for me. I’ve seen it a couple of times since and it hasn’t really grown much for me. Maybe this will be the magic viewing! I’d love to use it as an excuse to marathon the series ahead of time but I’m enough of a realist to know that won’t happen. Also Fight the Future is kind of a dumb name. I always just called it The X-Files Movie, which got harder when they made a second X-Files Movie with the equally bad subtitle of I Want to Believe. I don’t hate that movie but I know I’m supposed to.

Double Feature 3:
Adam: #1: Easy A (2010)
Patrick: #2: Indecent Proposal (1993)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Friends with Benefits, The Piano, Fired Up!, Unfaithful
Patrick: Theme: Gluck and a Cuck

Patrick: I really don’t like Indecent Proposal, but I couldn’t resist this theme and thought of all the cuck movies I programmed, this one felt right because Robert Redford passed and this seemed respectful. Lol. I like some Will Gluck movies! Maybe more so early on before he became the only filmmaker allowed to make romantic comedies. I don’t know how to feel about One Night Only. I get that the premise is a hard sell in a trailer but they’re not even trying to sell it as a comedy. I’ll totally see it for the Barbaro of it all but I might have a Callum Turner allergy. Stop trying to insist he’s a thing, movies. Do you have a favorite Gluck? Mine’s probably Easy A or Fired Up!. Eric Christian Olson just sinks three pointers in that one.

Adam: This is such a Cinemarink double feature/theme. I love it. I don’t like Indecent Proposal either, but we’ve joked so much about cucking that I have affection now for…cucking??! What’s wrong with me? It’s gotten to the point where when I saw the Super Troopers 3 trailer and there was a “pull up a cuck chair” joke I was ready to text you. You know what’s crazy? I have never seen Easy A despite Emma Stone being one of my favorite actors working today. Yeah, that One Night Only trailer stinks. I too like Barbaro, but she doesn’t strike me as funny so I dunno I hope for the best. I haven’t seen some essential Glucks (like Fired Up!) so for now my favorite is Friends with Benefits, which I remember enjoying the one time I saw it. I liked it better than No Strings Attached.

Double Feature 4:

Patrick: #1: It’s Complicated (2009)
Adam: #2: Defending Your Life (1991)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: She-Devil, Postcards from the Edge, Death Becomes Her
Adam: Theme: Meryl Streep Comedies

Adam: Not really creative of a theme but it’s a good pairing and would play well with these two movies back-to-back. I haven’t seen It’s Complicated since the mail physical media Netflix days but would like to revisit it (just not now…in 2029…you understand why). I also haven’t seen Defending Your Life in a long time and it’s beloved so I’m sure people would leave the Cinemarink happy with this double feature. My most lasting memory of Defending Your Life is not to take your eyes off the road to insert a new CD.

Patrick: This might be the best double of the month so far. It’s Complicated is more comforting than good in a Nancy Meyers way, but Defending Your Life is pretty great and Meryl Streep is kind of magical in it. I like her in comedies more than in dramas because I always feel like I’m supposed to be knocked out by everything she does but she’s so loose and likable in her comedies that I remember she doesn’t take herself too seriously. I listened to the Meryl Streep draft on The Big Picture and they left out her big Bonnie & Clyde musical number in Stuck On You, a movie I’m not crazy about but during which I think I first realized that Meryl Streep seems like a great sport and has a sense of humor about herself. It should have been when I saw The River Wild in the ‘90s but I only saw that one a year or two ago.

Double Feature 5:
Adam: #1: The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

Patrick: #2: Heavy Metal (1981)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Hot to Trot, Camp Candy “The Forest’s Prime Evil” episode
Patrick: Theme: Voiced by John Candy

Patrick: I was stuck here because I’ve never seen Rescuers Down Under, but I know John Candy voices a bird or some shit? I liked the idea of pairing a Disney cartoon with a more “adult” animated movie like Heavy Metal. Plus, it’s an excuse to see Heavy Metal on the big screen again. John Candy’s line deliveries as Den always crack me up. Plus, an episode of Camp Candy! I’m sure that shit will play.

Adam: Candy does play a bird or some shit in RDU! I really like The Rescuers Down Under. I rewatched it for a ‘90s Kid Movie Club not too long ago and it held up for me. I have a lot of nostalgia for it because I remember it was a movie my Mom took me to and I was really excited it was preceded with The Prince and the Pauper as a short and an intermission in between, which was a novel concept to me as a kid. I love this theme as a big John Candy fan. I should thank you and Smash Cut for getting me to finally watch Heavy Metal, which I really liked and bought on Blu-ray right afterwards. This night rules. I’m so excited to watch an episode of Camp Candy on the big screen. That’s a “Pancake Show,” i.e. a show you watch while eating a short stack when you’re a short stack. By short stack I mean when you were a kid -- or Danny DeVito in The Rainmaker. Great pancake scene. You should do a 24-hour marathon article on movies with pancake scenes.

Double Feature 6:

Patrick: #1: Colors (1988)
Adam: #2: Hamburger Hill (1987)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Moving Violations, The Meteor Man, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead
Adam: Theme: Pre-Fame Don Cheadle

Adam: I was surprised to see Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead in Cheadle’s filmography. Do you remember him in that movie? #BoatDrinks. Anyways, I thought it would be fun to highlight his early career here before his breakout in 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress. I haven’t seen either Colors or Hamburger Hill but have always meant to get around to them so this would be a good excuse to finally catch both, especially with the recent passing of Robert Duvall. Have you seen either of them? Any good? I vaguely remember hearing Sean Penn was kinda nuts on the set of Colors. (Checks Internet) Yes, yes he was.

Patrick: Sean Penn? Nuts? An asshole? Not MY Sean Penn. I literally rewatched Things to Do In Denver a few months ago – don’t ask my why, it’s Cherry 7-Up – and still have no memory of Don Cheadle being in it. That’s how big an impression both he and that movie made on me. I remember liking Hamburger Hill as a grungy Vietnam movie (a genre I like more than I should). Steven Weber is in it and he just got added to Flashback! You think some real Hill heads are gonna come out? I’m literally watching Colors for the first time as I’m typing this. It’s a movie I’ve wanted to see since it came out in 1988 and just haven’t. I like the Ice-T theme song, though. Think he’ll come perform it live? Should we have Cheadle do it?

Double Feature 7:
Adam: #1: Nope (2022)

Patrick: #2: Super 8 (2011)

Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: The Big Picture, Aliens, “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” segment from V/H/S/2
Patrick: Theme: When Filmmaking Meets Aliens

Patrick: I was recently showing Super 8 to a class and realized just how much it has in common with Jordan Peele’s Nope, which I started out by showing this semester. Both are movies about filmmaking that get interrupted by the arrival of an extraterrestrial monster. Nope treats it more as adult horror, while Super 8 is much more of a family adventure film. I prefer the latter because I am an infantilized manchild. I thought maybe it would be cool to do a night devoted to both movies and aliens, but I recognize that the theme is a stretch.

Adam: I really like this double. The theme’s clever. You’re being too critical of yourself. Plus, I get to revisit Nope, which I suspect I’d like more on a second viewing and Super 8, which is a movie I really like/almost love but haven’t seen in many years. You can’t go wrong with a night of movies featuring Keke Palmer and Elle Fanning. Production Value!

Double Feature 8:

Patrick: #1: Heat (1995)
Adam: #2: Chill Factor (1999)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Batman (1989), The Hot Spot, Poison Ivy, Diamonds, Ice Age, The Cooler
Adam: Theme: Mr. Freeze’s Pros and Cons

Adam: This theme is just me being dumb, but I couldn’t resist. Also, following up Heat with Chill Factor seems funny to me.

Patrick: OMG I love it. There can be no better way to follow up Heat. The trailer block alone has me excited for this one.

Double Feature 9:
Adam: #1: Frances Ha (2012)
Patrick: #2: Barbie (2023)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Greenberg, Mistress America, Jay Kelly
Patrick: Theme: Gerwig/Baumbach

Patrick: I thought it might be fun to do a night devoted to Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach with two movies written by the pair but one directed by each of them. The two movies are different enough that we’ll get totally unique experiences despite being from the same creative team. I’m also hoping to have a magic viewing of Barbie because I've had them for both Lady Bird and Frances Ha in the last year.

Adam: I’m with you on needing the magic viewing on Barbie. I liked it enough when I saw it during my own personal Barbenheimer Night, but I didn’t get into it as much as most people did. This is a great opportunity to give it another shot. I was really annoyed by Frances Ha the first time I saw it and then revisited it years later and absolutely loved it. It might be the biggest turnaround for me of a new movie I watched during my time at F This Movie! I like that lead character so much. She’s messy but in the best possible way and I love that she goes on vacation to Paris just to cave and go see Puss in Boots. I miss Gerwig acting. The directing thing is cool but she’s such a unique personality that I wish she still had star vehicles.

Double Feature 10:

Patrick: #1: Swordfish (2001)
Adam: #2: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: The Mummy Returns, Planet of the Apes, Ghosts of Mars
Adam: Theme: Summer 2001 Action Movies That Suck

Adam: I have enough nostalgia for Summer 2001 (a summer movie season that seemed to love being a summer movie season) that I even kinda have a soft spot for the bad movies. Swordfish bums me out because it’s one of too many examples of movies where John Travolta overestimates how cool he is. He’s certainly cool up to a time, but 2001 was not one of those years. I remember being bored out of my mind during Lara Croft: Tomb Raider but I would like to revisit it now that I know who Daniel Craig is, which I didn’t in 2001.

Patrick: I have never hated Swordfish but I probably should, right? Like why do I have a soft spot for that movie? I love that you call out Summer 2001 because I have the same affection for even the bad movies, though I have to admit that affection doesn’t quite extend to Tomb Raider. Maybe it’s because I never played the game. I rewatched it maybe a year ago and still found it to be pretty boring. Should I do a Summer 2001 24 Hours of Movies? It would just be an excuse to rewatch a bunch of stuff.

Adam: Yes, I want to read that.

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 2 May 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Review: THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 1 May 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

Take a stand for journalistic integrity. But make it fashion.

Mine is a house of virtue. A house of grace. A house of wisdom. In my house, we respect the great moments in 21st century American cinema: We respect the Ricardo Rincón trade scene in Moneyball. We respect the gas station “smile” scene in Magic Mike XXL. Most of all, we respect the cerulean sweater scene in The Devil Wears Prada. For the uninitiated — you poor bastards — it’s the scene where Runway editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) schools her self-important intern (Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs) on the cultural economics behind her chunky cerulean sweater. Andy’s a wanna-be journalist who fancies herself above the fashion industry, above all their frivolous preoccupation with haute couture. But as Miranda illustrates, Andy is mistaking ignorance for independence: “You think that you’ve made a choice…when, in fact, you’re wearing a sweater chosen for you by the people in this room.” Real, human people are devoting their time and talent to these creative endeavors, which makes them more valuable than Andy can possibly understand.

Believe it or not, it’s that same devotion to creativity that drives The Devil Wears Prada 2, the rare legacy sequel that’s more interested in evolution than it is in nostalgia. Again directed and written by David Frankel and Aline Brosh McKenna (respectively), Devil 2 begins twenty years after Andy’s departure from Runway. Now a veteran New York journalist, Andy is blindsided when her celebrated paper is suddenly shuttered in a brutal corporate write-down. Luckily for Andy, her old nemesis Miranda is in the midst of a PR disaster that leaves Runway in need of a reputational overhaul. Publisher Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), impressed by Andy’s stand against the conglomeration of media, recruits her as the new features editor. But as Andy struggles to balance substance and sensation — Runway is now online, where clicks drive revenue — she’ll battle a familiar crop of twenty-something interns (Simone Ashley), industry moguls (including Emily Blunt’s Emily, now a senior executive at Dior), and of course, the impossible, imperious Miranda Priestly.

Brimming with all the high-key style and energy of the 2006 original, Devil 2 sets the indulgent grandeur of the fashion business against a contracting publishing industry struggling to keep itself afloat. It’s 2026, after all: Magazines are dead, algorithms are everything, and for all her cutthroat bravado, Miranda recognizes that she’s little more than a pawn in the larger machinations of recalcitrant CEOs like Irv — whose son, Jay (B. J. Novak) is waiting in the wings — and Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux), a gauche tech billionaire who’s recently divorced (from Lucy Liu’s philanthropist Sasha) and currently dating Emily. Even as Andy’s editorials bring Runway some new intellectual heft, Miranda and her tireless right hand, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), are drowning in cutbacks, compromises, and updated HR regulations that protect Miranda’s underlings from the worst of her wrath (“Apparently, she used to just throw her coat at people,” says one horrified assistant). The future is here. It’s apps. It’s AI. And there’s very little room left for Runway.

It all sounds rather serious, but Frankel and McKenna take care to keep Devil 2 airy and upbeat, foregrounding the familiar characters and relationships that make the original film so warm and rewatchable: Andy’s now more a peer to Miranda than a protégé, but that doesn’t make her any more confident in the iron lady’s presence. Nigel’s still the heart and soul of Runway, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to step into the spotlight as its face. Emily is still a status-obsessed striver, but that doesn’t give her the vision necessary to be an icon. Most of all, the fashion industry is still an unforgiving cesspool of double-crosses and backstabs, and Andy and Miranda are still vulnerable, imperfect human beings who sometimes put their own self-interest before the needs of those around them. Both still struggle with relationships — Miranda with musician Stuart (Kenneth Branagh), and Andy with real estate developer Peter (Patrick Brammell) — and contemplate the toll that work takes on their lives (“People should know that there’s a cost,” Miranda admits to Andy).

Dramatic intricacies aside, most audiences will be excited enough just to return to the Devil Wears Prada universe, and they should be. The music is fun. The fits are spectacular. Hathaway, Tucci, and Blunt bring all the predictable charm, while Streep adds new layers of humanity to perhaps her most unexpected Oscar-nominated role. That humanity is the key, really, the extra element that elevates Devil 2 beyond the soulless victory lap that so many legacy sequels seem content enough to be. Like cinema itself, Runway is a monolith of old media, a hallowed, austere institution that thrives on the kind of creativity that so-called visionaries like Benji Barnes — who, by the way, operates on a “hydro deficit” and thinks humans will soon be “post-neck” — would replace with AI chatbots if given half a chance. But, as Andy learned all those years ago, genuine human imagination is so crucial to the lifeblood of our society that it’s often invisible to the eye. We’re all together on a continuum, even Andy’s trusty — though admittedly hideous — cerulean sweater.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 hits U.S. theaters today, Friday, May 1st.

Reel Talk: Show Business

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Adam Riske and Sonia Mansfield

Sonia and Adam chat about their experiences working in movie theaters and video stores.

Sonia: I’m not just someone who loves going to the movie theater. I used to work in movie theaters, too.

I worked full-time at the movie theater to pay for college, which I attended part-time. That means I worked for a long time at movie theaters.

I worked at several different theaters, including Mann Theatres (when that existed) and Cinemark (back when they still had the Front Row Joe mascot), but they all had a few things in common:

• Customers would complain about the prices.
• Employees would complain about the uniforms.
• And there would be a small group of employees that really love movies.

I know that’s why I started working there. I spent a lot of my free time at the movie theater. It thought it would be nice to get paid to be there. Plus, I could see free movies, which made my meager pay seem so much more.

Adam, I know you worked at a video store. What made you want to get a job there?

Adam: I got a job at Blockbuster Video when I was 17 and entering my senior year of high school. Prior to that, I had worked at a grocery store, an office supplies store, and ONE WEEKEND at my local mall theater (which I quit because the work environment was terrible and I didn’t want going to the movies ruined for me). From what I remember, I was in to rent Go and saw that they were hiring and asked for an application. I just wanted a job where I was around movies. It was a no-brainer for them to hire me. I was a cool dude who could make that place into something hip. It was a great experience working at my local Blockbuster off and on from 1999 to 2003. I would go back to work there during college breaks and summer vacation for a few years. The environment was great, I got to talk about movies all day, my co-workers were not as cool as me so I was like prom king of that place, and I got five free rentals every week, which I used for new releases and to watch older titles in my first wave of knowing classic movies pre-1980. It’s still my favorite job I’ve ever had despite being in my current industry for 20+ years and at the same company for almost 15 of them. The only bad part about Blockbuster was it didn’t pay well at all, but I didn’t care. I was having fun and my parents were happy I was working and saving a little bit of money, which then all went to keeping Tricia happy. I should send her an invoice. We dated for 2 years, and she left me for a waiter at Medieval Times.

Among my Blockbuster Video era (era) highlights:
• Someone pooped in the store but not in the bathroom and I refused to clean it
• I threw a powdered donut hole clear across the store and hit a fellow employee in the head, resulting in the most satisfying powder poof anyone has ever seen in their lives
• I used to hide in the drop box and pull tapes out of people’s hands when they started to drop the tape in
• I set up an obstacle course in the store and got written up
• I made a construction paper “green mile” on the floor leading to the new release wall to celebrate the release of The Green Mile on VHS and DVD and was threatened with a write-up for it
• People used to hover over me to see if a copy of The Sixth Sense was returned as I emptied the drop box. This lasted for weeks.
• My store’s customer base LOVED Ashley Judd. She was like queen bee of actresses at that place.
• I refused to check out video game consoles because it was too much work and that’s not what I was there for - - I was there for movies.
• I would ignore customer’s late fees if the customer looked like they would get mad at me for asking.

What were the most totemic movies/experiences from when you were working at the theaters? Like, which movies played forever? Were there anyone people hated and got mad about? What were some of your favorite/least favorite things about working there?

Sonia: First of all, Tricia, girl, what were you thinking? A waiter at Medieval Times? He wasn’t even a knight? He probably won her over by calling her m’lady all the time. Her loss.

I really loved my movie theater job, too, for similar reasons. The staff was mostly people my age, and I got to be around movies all the time. I was a shy teenager, and the theater really helped me come out of my shell and find my people.

Some of my movie theater highlights:

• I got the people in a very long line for 1989’s Batman to do the wave.
• One of my favorite things was just a shift in which I ran the projection booth. That’s right, I was a certified projectionist, and I’d have entire shifts in which I did nothing but thread film through projectors. I loved the clicking sound that they made. So satisfying.
• Inspired by Dead Again, whenever a coworker would do something I didn’t like, I’d say, “This … is for you” and I would chase them with scissors.
• Some movies had really fun songs over the end credits, and the theater would turn into a dance party. I remember dancing with my coworker Dan to “Heartbreak Hotel” at the end of Postcards from the Edge and getting a round of applause from some customers.
• Another Dan story, because he brought out a carefree version of me … One night, Dan and I were closing the theater, meaning we had to stay until the last movie got out. It was a warm night, and we had the front doors open. Across the street from the theater was a fancy seafood restaurant that often hosted weddings. This night, there was a pretty loud wedding reception. We were both listening to the music and pretending we were there. Finally, Dan convinced me that we should bring the couple a wedding gift. We filled up a massive trash bag with popcorn and crashed their reception. The couple said they loved movie theater popcorn and invited us to stay. We had to get back to work, but we did stay for a dance I like to imagine that this couple has a photo of these random movie theater employees in their polyester vests and bowties gettin’ down on the dance floor to Kool and The Gang’s “Celebration.”
• A customer once asked me, seriously, if they needed to see the other Apollo movies to understand Apollo 13.
• A woman yelled in my face and poked me in the chest because her kids snuck into Nixon, when she bought them tickets for Ace Ventura 2. I told her, “The theater isn’t your babysitter. They snuck into Nixon. Are you afraid they’re gonna learn something?”
• We had a customer called “The Ankle grabber” who would crawl on the ground in an aisle and grab women’s ankles. The women would scream, and he would get up and run out of the theater. This happened multiple times, and we never caught him. We also had one we called “The Mad Whacker” and you can guess what he used to do. Gross.
• A brawl broke out in the lobby and someone smashed the Weekend at Bernie’s standee. One of my coworkers screamed, “Bernie noooooo!” We made fun of him for weeks.
• One time I lied to a customer and told him the 10 pm screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation was canceled, because I was so tired and wanted to go home early. I felt kinda bad about it. He was the only customer to come in for it. Also, it was February.

The summer of 1994 was the busiest movie season I can remember. We had The Lion King and Forrest Gump, and those movies sold out for months. This is before you could pick out your seats online. This is before you could even buy tickets in advance. You could only buy the tickets for that day, and we were cash only. Isn’t that wild? I was an assistant manager, and I spent my days basically doing crowd work, letting people in line to buy tickets know how full the theater was, directing people to the correct lines, answering questions, stuff like that. I actually lost my voice one day, and the manager assigned one of the floorstaff to be my voice. It was his job that day to repeat what I whispered to him. It was interesting to witness how customers would respond to what I was saying but it was coming from a man. They were a lot nicer to him.

Also, to answer your question, both The Lion King and Forrest Gump played at my theater for more than a year, which means I saw those movies countless times. And, I had to listen to the soundtracks for those movies for more than a year in the lobby. The Lion King, in particular, is burned into my brain. I have a real soft spot for that movie, and I could probably recite entire scenes from memory.

By the way, when I was working at this theater, my roommate was working at Blockbuster. We were either seeing free movies in the theater or renting them. It was the best of times.

Adam, did you have go-to movies that y’all would play in the store? When my roommate worked there, the corporate mandate was to play these weird compilations that promoted movies and music. She had Quad City DJ’s “C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)” stuck in her head for months.

Adam: We were only allowed to watch real movies on Sundays, which was a shift I used to work, and the rule was it must be a movie from the Kids section. I remember we watched The Dark Crystal and a few other movies of that ilk. We felt cool. Like John Cusack in High Fidelity. It helped that our assistant manager, Russ, oversaw that shift and he would always get drunk the night before and hide in the office most of the day. He got fired for stealing DVD sell-thru copies of Erin Brockovich. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Our store manager, Gordy (yes, that was his name), blocked Russ from walking out of the store with his bicycle and was all “Open the backpack Russ” and Russ was like “Get out of my way” and then Gordy grabbed Russ' bike wheel like “Show’s over.” Gordy became like a folk hero after that. You would have liked him. He had a Kiefer Sutherland thing going. He didn’t say “Shit Fuck Dammit” like Kiefer in Mirrors but I did hear him yell “MutherfuckinshitBALLLLLSSSS!!” when a soda crate full of broken-down VHS covers (which we would repurpose for Previously Viewed Tapes later) fell off a shelf and spilled all over the floor. They were sorted alphabetically before the fall, thus the cursing from Gordy.

We used to play the in-store preview tapes all the time. They were usually an hour, and we had about three at a time to rotate through. They honestly weren’t that bad. They were kind of like friends after a while. I’ve looked on YouTube and eBay to see if any are available from the years I worked at Blockbuster, but I’ve come up short. I would love to rewatch them again. My favorite bit was being introduced to the Carl Thomas song “I Wish,” which I still love to this day. Fun Fact: When “I Wish” would be on and a customer would come up to rent something, I would pause the tape, so I didn’t miss any of “I Wish.”

Can we talk about Front Row Joe? Tell me everything about Front Row Joe. Did audiences like him? Which was the Front Row Joe video that stuck with you? I went on a run a few years ago where I liked watching Movie Theater Policy Videos on YouTube (no wonder I’m single) and Front Row Joe was a real find.

Sonia: RIP Front Row Joe. I don’t know if he’s actually dead, but he’s dead to Cinemark now. For people who don’t know, Front Row Joe was a cartoon short that would play before the movie. It usually featured a little cute song. It had a cast of characters, including Front Row Joe’s girlfriend, Popcorn Penny, and some jerk named Clyde, who talks all through the movie. Oh, and they’re all cats. I never understand the name.Only a psycho wants to sit in the front row.

You’d think that employees would grow to hate Front Row Joe, but we actually liked him. I think it’s because other theatres didn’t have anything like him. When you hit a milestone work anniversary you’d get some sort of Front Row Joe swag. I still have a magnet and a blanket with Front Row Joe on them. And, once a year, the Front Row Joe mascot costume would arrive, and someone would work a shift wearing it. You’d hang out in the lobby and say hi to people, stuff like that. You better believe I was first in line to wear it. It smelled bad in that costume, but it was fun to be silly with customers. And, of course, there was Front Row Joe After Dark. Oh, the things he would do when customers weren’t around.

It’s time to roll the credits. Thanks for sharing your Blockbuster stories with me, Adam.

Now we want to hear from y’all, readers. Did you work at a movie theater or video store? Share your stories. There really is no business like show business.

FTM 818: ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick and JB bring down a president.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.

Also discussed this episode: Crime 101 (2026), The Killer (1989), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), The Brass Bottle (1964), Roommates (2026), Nuts (1987)

Fifty Before ’50: L’ARROSEUR ARROSE (The Sprinkler Sprinkled) 1895

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by JB
Welcome to my new column where we are all going to have fun, pretending to be 75 years old or more.

Sometimes in my dotage I despair that to many movie-centric websites, film as an art form seems to have started in the early 1980s. This gets my goat. That is bad, for I need that goat. I milk the goat to provide milk for my wife’s morning coffee. (Shhhh! She knows nothing of the goat.) As a remedy to this (the internet machine’s cinematic tunnel-vision, not the goat), for the next fifty weeks, I am going to exclusively explore films made before 1950. It will be fun and edumacational as all hell. Please join me.

First under my microscope is L’arroseur Arrose from 1895. The title of this very short film is something of an idiom and cannot be directly translated into English; the closest we can come is The Gardener Gardened or The Sprinkler Sprinkled. it is a living piece of history.

One of the first films by the Lumiere Brothers, who pioneered both photographing motion pictures and their exhibition, L’arroseur Arrose has been called the first comedy film by no less an expert than Gerald Mast, author of The Comic Mind, the seminal book on the subject. If you have never read it, you had better do that now. I’ll wait...

(Whistles. Sighs. Fixes self a sandwich.)

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: A gardener (Francois Clerc) waters plants. A mischievous boy (Leon Trotobas) steps on the gardener’s hose, stopping the flow of water. The gardener is flummoxed. He looks down into the hose to assess the problem. Just then, the boy takes his foot off the hose, causing the water to flow again, and (spoiler alert!) the gardener gets a face full of water. Instantly recognizing the source of his mishap, the gardener chases the boy and spanks him. Because the camera does not move, the two characters move all over the frame. It takes longer to read this synopsis than it takes to view the actual film.

Don’t believe me? You can watch the entire thing right here:

Proving one can over-intellectualize anything, Gerald Mast makes the following points about L’arroseur Arrose: “It is not worth trying to turn this little film into a miniature chef d’oeuvre (a masterpiece, the most outstanding creation of an artist) of the comic intellect. But the extreme simplicity of the compound makes it very easy to analyze its chemistry. The elements of the film are four: 1) a comic protagonist wants to perform a task; 2) a comic antagonist interferes with that performance; 3) a comic object begins as a tool and ends as a weapon; 4) the protagonist makes a comic discovery of the problem and takes action on the basis of that discovery. Each of these elements exists in a very simple, uncomplicated form in the film.”

TANGENT: When the Academy Museum first opened in Hollywood, they hosted a magnificent special exhibition of early motion toys titled “The Path to Cinema: Highlights from the Richard Balzer Collection,” which included flipbooks, zoetropes, praxinoscopes, and a special corner devoted to the founding work of the Lumiere Brothers. I had never before seen these 130-year-old films look that good. I guess when you have the weight of the Oscars behind you, you can demand first or second- generation prints.

Interestingly enough, the Lumiere brothers would film this short again the following year. The 1896 version of L’arroseur Arrose features a different antagonist and a slightly different ending. I cannot find definitive proof of why the film was remade. I theorize that either 1) the original was so popular that the Lumieres wore out their original negative and, at 41 seconds, it was easier for them to just film it again; or 2) the filmmakers were responding to overwhelming audience feedback that insisted that the mischievous antagonist should be soaked as well. While the gardener is played by the same actor, the mischievous boy in the remake is noticeably older, and I theorize that is to make the new concluding joke funnier because it removes the “mean streak” inherent in turning a hose on a small boy. A teenager, it seems, is just asking for it.

Jane Gaines, Professor of Film at Columbia University and Professor Emerita of Literature and English at Duke University, has published a critical essay in the Cultural Studies journal titled "Early Cinema’s Heyday of Copying: The Too Many Copies of L’Arroseur Arrosé" which deals with this interesting phenomenon. Apparently, there are actually THREE different versions of L’arroseur Arrose floating around.

Here is the 1896 “remake,” for comparison:

As I tumbled down the Lumiere rabbit hole researching this column, I found out all sorts of things I did not know, though I taught this film for over thirty years during my previous day job as a high-school teacher. (My current day job being “layabout.”) I found out the names of the actors in the film. I discovered that a statue was erected to honor this exact Lumiere short in Bescancon, France. Here are three pictures of it; it’s terrific in its conception and execution. This statue makes me want to fly out to France to see it, which is unusual because I am loathe to haul my fat ass anywhere, much less overseas. I think it would be utterly terrific if all tourists, happily entering the space between the two buildings where this statue is on display, were to get completely soaked by local lads brandishing real hoses squirting copious amounts of real water.

The Sprinkler sprinkled, indeed.

Watch Your Language: BADLA

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rosalie Lewis
I love the experience of going into a movie with zero expectations.

Especially if we’re talking about a mystery or thriller where there could be plot twists and character reveals and dun dun DUN type of moments, the less I know the happier I am. This runs counter to Hollywood marketers making a habit of showing us the most shocking moments in trailers, naturally. And then there’s the online Discourse, which I’m about to Diss of Course because that, too, takes away some of the joys of discovery.

However! I have a solution. If I watch a movie that is not in English and not even made in the US, the odds of it being spoiled in any way before I see it are greatly reduced. And this, my friends, is how I stumbled across Badla, a Hindi remake of a Spanish language film. I saw that it appeared to be something of a murder mystery/legal thriller and that’s all I needed to know. I hit play on Netflix and strapped in for the ride. Hypocritically, I’m writing a column about this movie so you will end up knowing more than I did when you watch it. Nonetheless, I promise not to spoil your good time by giving away its secrets. I’ll just tantalize you with some details that hopefully help you decide if this should be your next watch.

Selling point number one: If you love Al Pacino, the lead character in this movie is going to make you very happy. Pacino is not in this movie but I swear this feels like a role he could and would play if there ever is a Hollywood remake. Not Al is played by Amitabh Bachchan, who has starred in hundreds of Bollywood films and impressed the likes of Francois Truffaut back in the day. I will confess this is the first movie I’ve seen him in but I can see what the hype is about already, and I’ll definitely check out others.

Selling point number two: It’s a locked room mystery. Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie both popularized this whodonit on hard mode, and Rian Johnson had some fun with it as well in his latest installment of the Knives Out franchise. This one takes place in a hotel room, and as a selling point to the selling point, I personally think movies set at hotels have lots of potential for greatness. See also: The Shining; The Grand Budapest Hotel. This is not as good as either of those, but you get my point.

Selling point number three: This movie is not trying to be super gritty and realistic and grounded; think more Frieda McFadden and less Anatomy of a Fall. It’s 2026. You don’t want realism in your entertainment, the world is a doomscrolling vampire. What you want is unhinged behavior by characters who know better, or should.

Selling point number four: Amrita Singh. She plays a supporting character in this movie and was nominated for multiple awards for the performance by critics groups. Once you see it you will understand why. I have decided my Hindi film education must continue by watching more of her filmography because she’s great.

If my powers of persuasion have been successful, you have now been sold on watching this movie. Caveat emptor and all that; if you are expecting this to be Prestige Cinema it will probably not deliver. If you just want the type of movie that a mid-'90s Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin would have starred in based on a script by Wesley Strick, this might be the ticket for you. It’s not an erotic thriller but there is an affair, if that helps seal the deal. Parts of the plot could be described as “highly illogical” and “what is wrong with you” but so could parts of the average Tuesday, so why the hell not?

Since watching this, I’ve learned that there have actually been six different remakes in various languages. I’m not sure I will seek any of them out, but if you decide to please let me know! Badla is available on Netflix in the US; you can also rent it on Apple TV or YouTube.

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Review: APEX

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

Let Theron be Theron.

Here’s the thing: It’s patently ridiculous to feel sorry for Charlize Theron. She’s one of the most commercially successful actors in Hollywood. She’s an Oscar, Golden Globe, and Silver Bear winner. She’s a noted advocate for charitable causes around the world who’s headlined celebrated masterpieces like Mad Max: Fury Road and played memorable supporting roles in cult favorites like That Thing You Do!. She’s taken weird chances in offbeat comedies like Long Shot and cashed paychecks in franchise slop like The Fate of the Furious. She’s a talented performer with brains enough to take the reins as a producer under her Denver and Delilah banner. In short: Charlize Theron is doing just fine. And yet there was a time when I told myself — probably while white-knuckling it through The Old Guard 2 — that Charlize Theron deserved much better. That she was better than Æon Flux and Atomic Blonde. That she was better than Doctor Strange 2 and her new Netflix thriller, Apex. But I think I was wrong. Maybe Charlize likes these roles, and maybe that’s okay.

From Icelandic action director Baltasar Kormákur (2 Guns, Everest, Beast) comes Apex, a low-fi riff on The Most Dangerous Game that pits Theron’s adventure-seeking Sasha against a feral hunter (Taron Egerton as Ben) in a one-on-one showdown deep in the Australian wilderness. Stricken with guilt over the accidental death of her boyfriend (Eric Bana as Tommy), Sasha follows his lucky compass to the Outback so that she can… Wait. Actually, it’s never made clear why she’s there. To hike and kayak, I suppose. Doesn’t matter. Ben’s just a nice guy at a gas station when they first meet, and Sasha doesn’t find anything fishy about the very specific instructions he gives her to a very secluded part of the nearby national park. Well, surprise! He’s a homicidal maniac. Now, armed with only her wits and some salted meat of questionable origin — Ben’s own recipe, it turns out — Sasha must navigate an escape through Australia’s most treacherous rivers, mountains, and canyons before a crossbow-wielding madman with mommy issues turns her ass into jerky. Literally.

Gleefully unburdened by plot, theme, or dramatic complexity, Apex is the kind of innocuous Friday night actioner my stepdad can click on when he’s decompressing on the couch after a long week at work. My mom will insist that he keeps the volume down — he’s about as reckless with the sound system as she is with her brake pads — but he could probably get just as much out of Apex on mute as he would if he could actually hear the collection of tropes and cliches that makes up Jeremy Robbins’ screenplay. It might work better, actually: Rather than going on our own hopeless hunt for character development — Sasha’s reckless thirst for adventure gets her boyfriend killed in the first act but becomes a crucial asset in the other two (?) — we’re free to enjoy Apex’s breathtaking landscape photography and death-defying stunts, both of which are — *checks Apex’s press notes* — definitely, 100% filmed in real locations and employ absolutely no indoor sets, green screen trickery, or computer-generated actors. Definitely, 100% not. Definitely.

And while I might personally prefer to see an actor as gifted as Charlize Theron exercise some more textured thespian muscle — maybe I’ll get my wish in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey, in which she plays Calypso — the fact remains that she seems perfectly comfortable making B-tier action movies for Netflix. She seems perfectly happy trading hackneyed barbs with the likes of Taron Egerton — who studiously observed James McAvoy in Split when preparing for his role in Apex — and charging her gym membership to the studio. Once I accepted that, I started to appreciate Apex the way I appreciate the days in class when my students are writing essays or taking tests, the days when simply being physically present is enough to earn my money. It is an objective fact that Charlize Theron was physically present for the production of Apex. She was filmed delivering dialogue, climbing rocks, and scowling into the middle distance. It certainly isn’t the best use of her talents, but we all deserve to disassociate at work every now and then.

For his part, Baltasar Kormákur understood his assignment and executed it. I don’t know much about his previous work, but he seems to be a real meat and potatoes director — a competent actionsmith who knows where the camera should go and why it should go there. He makes that competence look easy, and even as I’m typing this, I’m allowing for the possibility that my ignorant ass is underestimating the craft required to execute even bland, C-plus work like Apex. Making movies is hard, and Apex is made with the same earnest, anodyne spirit as its Netflix cousin, Thrash. I know I should be celebrating the Pure Cinema of that, the fact that low-budget rip-offs and programmers like Apex and Thrash are still being made (and that they’ll receive 4K releases from whichever boutique label is still chugging along in a decade or so). I just wish these box-fillers had a little more attitude. A little more charm. Something — even something bad — that would make the six weeks Charlize Theron had to roll around in the mud feel just a little bit more worthwhile.

Apex hits Netflix on Friday, April 24th.

Thrill Seeker: WHISPERS IN THE DARK

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Sonia Mansfield
Welcome to my new column Thrill Seeker, in which I watch thrillers from the '80s and '90s. Why the '80s and '90s? Good question, thrill seekers.

I think there is something special about those movies. Sometimes they’re melodramatic. Sometimes they’re violent. Sometimes they’re sexy. But they’re always entertaining. These movies have big stars with good performances. They’re shot on location and not on a greenscreen, people! We rarely get movies like this on the big screen (but we did get The Housemaid this year). Stories like this are usually relegated to a limited series run on a streamer like Presumed Innocent or All Her Fault.

When it comes to '80s and '90s thrillers, even when it’s bad, it’s still kinda good. Or as my podcasting sister from another mister Margo Donohue used to say, “It’s something to watch.”

So, let’s get into it. In this column, I’m going to run through the plot for you, but no spoilers. And I’m kicking it off with 1992’s Whispers in the Dark, the movie Gene Siskel picked as one of the worst movies he saw in 1992. That’s wild because Consenting Adults came out in 1992, too. (Don’t worry. Your time will come, Consenting Adults.)

Whispers in the Dark

Starring Annabella Sciorra, Jamey Sheridan, Alan Alda, Jill Clayburgh, John Leguizamo, Deborah Unger, and Anthony LaPaglia

Written and directed by Christopher Crowe

Rated R for sex, violence, language, and poor decision-making

Tagline: Deception. Betrayal. Seduction. Murder. Her life depends on every word.

The plot: Annabella Sciorra plays Ann, a psychiatrist in New York. Her patients include Eve (Deborah Unger), who spends her sessions describing the sadomasochistic sex she enjoys with her boyfriend right before their weekly lunch date at Tavern on the Green, and Johnny (John Leguizamo), an artist who is also into sadomasochistic stuff, but he channels it into art. It’s never made clear whether this is something Ann specializes in or if she just decided that Wednesday was S&M day on her work schedule.

Outside of work, Ann has dinner with two friends, psychologists Leo and Sarah. They’re played by Alan Alda and Jill Clayburgh, who has the important role as Alan Alda’s wife. In other words, she isn’t given much to do. In addition to being her friend, Leo is also her therapist, which seems like a bad idea.I love my friends. I’m not sure I want them as my therapist, even if it were their jobs.

Anyway, the next day, she’s on the elevator in her office building, and some creep is staring at her. Oh, it’s Jamey Sherdian as Doug. He apologizes for staring, but she’s just so “pretty in a real nice way.” Smooth. Ann doesn’t have time for these shenanigans. She doesn’t want to be late for the S&M Story Hour that starts in her office.

This time, Eve strips down in the office while telling her sexy story, and Ann doesn’t really try to stop her. Again, I found myself questioning Ann’s credentials. It’s all sexy story time until Eve mentions there was a noose involved, and now Ann is really worried for Eve’s safety. Ann leaves Eve alone in the office for a second, and when she comes back. Ann is gone. Oh, and so are some patient files and tapes. Seems like the kinda thing you should have locked up, Ann.

Ann is worried, but a nice distraction comes in the form of Doug asking her out for coffee “with a view.” He takes her flying in his plane. It’s a real panty dropper move, and Ann is all in on Doug after that. Well, until she sneaks into Tavern on the Green to spy on her patient Eve and her boyfriend, who looks suspiciously like Doug, because it is Doug.

And here’s where my plot summary ends, thrill seekers. Just know there’s a murder, and the cop is played by Anthony Lapaglia, who has played a cop so many times he should be allowed to carry a badge.

Is it a thrill? This movie is written and directed by Christopher Crowe, who wrote The Mean Season, Fear, The Bone Collector, and, strangely, The Last of the Mohicans. 🎶 One of these things is not like the other. 🎶 But he only directed two movies: this one and Off Limits, starring Willem Dafoe and Gregory Hines. *immediately adds Off Limits to her watchlist*

I can see why he didn’t direct a lot. This movie is messy. A lot of character motivations don’t make sense. And for a movie that was almost slapped with an NC-17 rating, it’s actually not that sexy. The chemistry between Ann and Doug should be undeniable. It’s very deniable. Jamey Sheridan is a fine actor. I’m not sure I buy him as the romantic lead in a '90s thriller. Originally, Lou Diamond Phillips was gonna play this part, and that makes more sense to me.

I know this sounds like I don’t like the movie, but I actually do. I think critics were too hard on this movie back in the day. It was an embarrassment of riches in 1992. We had so many of these erotic thrillers that we could just shit on one for fun. I worked at the movie theater when it was playing, and I was the lone defender of this movie. Why? Because I think the ending really goes for it. I don’t have a film degree, but I think the ending is what they call “batshit.” I love a well written, smart, tight thriller, but if you’re not that, then going bananas at the end is a great way to win me over.

Rating: I give it two and a half bunnies in a boiling pot out of five.

FTM 817: PANIC ROOM

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick and Rosalie are locked in.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.

Also discussed this episode: Wuthering Heights (2026), Pretty Lethal (2026), How to Make a Killing (2026), Straw Dogs (1971) Outcome (2026), Thrash (2026), Meatballs 4 (1992)

Heavy Action: HARD TO KILL

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

You can take this one to the bank. The blood bank.

1990's Hard to Kill was my introduction to Steven Seagal. He had already made and released his first feature, Above the Law, two years prior but that wasn't on my radar for whatever reason. Hard to Kill, on the other hand, very much was, and I don't know if that's because the ads were more incessant or the title more memorable or because it also starred Kelly LeBrock, on whom I had nursed a crush since Weird Science, a movie I still don't really like. Whatever the reason, Hard to Kill was high on my "want to see" list that year. Because it was rated R, though, and because I wasn't able to talk my newly-divorced dad into taking me to see it (guess he had other stuff on his mind), I had to wait for VHS. That's kind of ok. This is the kind of movie that's made to be watched repeatedly on VHS, and that's exactly what I did.

Seagal plays the excellently-named Mason Storm, a cop who stops a convenience store robbery on Oscar night 1983. I'm not sure why that's important, but there's a lot of dialogue about the Oscars, which I really like. It means that Mason Storm got to see Gandhi beat E.T. for Best Picture, a bigger crime than that convenience store robbery he stopped. Anyway, he goes home to his wife and bad guys break in and kill her and shoot him but he doesn't die because these fuckers don't realize he's hard to kill. He instead goes into a coma for seven years, during which time he grows a hilarious coma beard -- more of a coma goatee -- and is nursed back to health by Kelly LeBrock, Seagal's real-life wife at the time the movie was made. Still a target for the mob hitmen who tried to kill him in the first place, Mason Storm has to recuperate in secret and then get his revenge against all the bad guys (including a senator played by the great William Sadler) who killed his wife, tried to kill him and his son, stole seven years from his life, and never even took the time to write.

In my younger days, I would measure the quality of a Steven Seagal movie by the length of his ponytail, ergo Out for Justice is better than Marked for Death, which is better than Hard to Kill, which is better than Above the Law. That all went out the window with the release of Under Siege, definitely one of his best and easily his most commercial movie in which he sports no ponytail at all. WTF. At least Under Siege keeps the titling tradition wherein you can put the words "Steven Seagal IS..." in front of all his early movies, even if it does lose the three-word structure. My point is that Hard to Kill is pretty good, albeit not as well made as some of his other movies directed by the likes of Andrew Davis, John Flynn, and Dwight H. Little. This one is directed by Bruce Malmuth, whose only other noteworthy credit is the very good 1981 thriller Nighthawks with Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams. He also plays the ring announcer in The Karate Kid and The Karate Kid Part II. For an actor playing a ring announcer, he's an ok director.

Besides the shortness of his pony tail, Hard to Kill finds Seagal still in his "just cop" period, when being a detective with the LAPD was still enough to build his mythology and develop his onscreen persona. Not too much later (I want to say it starts around Under Siege?), we start getting mysterious backstories for all of his characters -- he's former CIA or some nondescript shadow operation that makes him not just sound much cooler, but also much tougher and more intimidating. It's always a matter of "you don't even know what this guy can do" in all of his movies shortly after this one. I prefer him in pissed off cop mode. He seems pretty pissed off through this whole movie, even in his "softer" scenes, but at least it leads to some great one liners like my favorite: "That's for my wife, fuck you and die." Not clever, not sugar-coated, just a man finally opening up and saying what he means.

Seagal's co-star in Hard to Kill is the aforementioned Kelly LeBrock (wife #3 and wouldn't be the last). She's one of the better co-stars Seagal ever had, I'm guessing because their real-life relationship affords them some degree of on-screen romantic chemistry, an area in which Seagal is otherwise totally deficient. For the most part, his movies couldn't be less interested in making him a romantic lead. I would say that's because his characters are always all about the job they have to do, but I suspect it has more to do with Seagal barely being convincing as a human being, much less a partner to someone else. As much as I think his outsized ego would make him love being portrayed as a ladies' man, he's far too selfish a performer to share the spotlight with another actor in that way. Just read up on his abuse of stunt men as a way of putting himself over and you'll understand.

I come here not to litigate the shittiness of Steven Seagal the Person, I come to praise Hard to Kill. Kind of. There's stuff I like in this movie that we don't necessarily get in other Seagal movies, but I also know that there are several Seagal movies I like more than this one. I'm always a little surprised when people name it as their favorite, even though it holds a special place in my heart. For better or worse, this was the movie that more or less bought Seagal his career. Whereas Above the Law made audiences sit up and take notice, Hard to Kill was a huge hit and grossed $75 million worldwide on a budget of only $11.5m. It's the movie that helped codify the Seagal persona on screen. It offers one of the better actors to play a Seagal villain in William Sadler (credited here as "Bill") even though it doesn't seem 100% sure how to handle him. I mean, he kind of gets taken to the blood bank but it's not a full withdrawal if you get what I mean. I hope you do because I'm not even sure myself.

Hard to Kill played as part of F This Movie Fest a couple of years back when we did 1990 as the year and it remember it being a sneaky favorite or a lot of people. Maybe it's the kind of movie that plays best in a group, which explains why it was such a hit in the communal setting of movie theaters back upon release. Every movie is more fun with a crowd, but genre stuff like action and horror and comedy is particularly fun because it garners such a visceral response. Even as a kid back in 1990, it felt kind of cool discovering a new action star in real time, especially when Jean-Claude Van Damme was coming up around the same period and it felt like a new class was being ushered in behind heavyweights like Schwarzenegger and Stallone. The shift in the marketplace and Seagal's own awfulness meant he didn't enjoy the same kind of career longevity as a Schwarzenegger or a Stallone, but that's as much on him as it is anything else. His career was pretty easy to kill.

Got a movie you'd like to see covered in a future installment of Heavy Action? Let us know in the comments below!

2K Replay: BOBBY

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Adam Riske

Nominated for “Best Screenplay” (Emilio Estevez) at the St. Louis Film Critics Association Awards. He lost to Peter Morgan for The Queen.

• Best Scene/Moment: The scene in the kitchen where Laurence Fishburne, Jacob Vargas, and Freddy Rodriguez argue and joke around while eating cobbler. The dialogue is interesting and it made me want cobbler, thus working on multiple levels.

• Best Song (tie): “Grazing in the Grass” by Hugh Masekela and “Tracks of My Tears” by Smokey Robinson

• Best Merch: A “Bobby…Cast Signed 8x12 Photo…” for $299.99. I like this autograph because it looks like everyone signed it while riding on the back of a motorcycle. It looks insane. The photo was signed by Emilio Estevez, Ashton Kutcher (who the seller calls out is a “tough signer”), Demi Moore (said here to be a “very tough signer”), Sharon Stone, Christian Slater, William H. Macy, Joshua Jackson, Nick Cannon, and Joy Bryant. Do you think Kutcher and Moore bonded over being tough signers which led to their marriage?

• Director Grade: Bobby was directed by Emilio Estevez.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: Men at Work, Bobby
OK Movies: N/A
Bad Movies: N/A
Unseen By Me: Wisdom, The War at Home, Rated X, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, The Way, The Public
Overall Grade: B

• Double It with This 2006 Movie: All the King’s Men
• Year 2006 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, Man of the Year, The Sentinel

• Ella McCay or Bobby? Tie

• Mall Movie? Maybe. It aspires to be a prestige Oscar movie that would play at the fancy theater in town, but it feels like a B-tier wannabe mall epic to me. I say this affectionately.

• Only in 2006: A dramatic turn by Nick Cannon.

• Scene Stealer (tie): Anthony Hopkins and Christian Slater.

• I Miss: Large ensemble movies with tons of movie stars in small roles.

• I Don’t Miss: Giving Ashton Kutcher parts in dramas and counting on him blending in.

• 2006 Crush (tie): Lindsay Lohan and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

• 2026 Crush (tie): Sharon Stone and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

• What I Thought in 2006: I remember sort of rolling my eyes at Bobby when it came out because it felt try hard coming from Emilio Estevez. Eventually I watched it because of the cast and thought it was better than I expected.

• What I Think in 2026: I might like Bobby more now than I did back in 2006. It’s earnest and the kind of big ensemble drama I miss being made by Hollywood. It’s clumsy at times but lands the big emotional punch at the end that it needs to. Overall, I think Bobby is a bit underrated now that it can exist as just a movie and not an awards hopeful.

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Four Decades Under the Influence

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

Indulge me, if you will, with an update.

I’m going to be straight with you: I don’t have a review for today. My son has Little League games during all of this week’s press screenings, the damn Sheep Detectives embargo doesn’t lift until Mother’s Day weekend, and Netflix wouldn’t send me a screener for Chandler Levack’s Roommates unless I interviewed one of its lead actors. So, in the interest of having something for you fine folks to read every Friday, I’d like to provide an update to a nearly ten-year-old post, one of my very first on the site.

As I said in that piece, I’ve always loved movies. Movies make me feel safe and understood. Movies give me guidance when no one else is willing or able. Movies are in my blood, really: My paternal grandfather owned the first independent video stores in Philadelphia, which is how my parents met as teenagers. Though he was more interested in lucrative business opportunities than he was movies — the home video market was exploding at the time — my grandfather provided me with the kind of unbridled access that would build a lifetime foundation. My maternal grandfather wasn’t much of a cinephile either, but his practice of copying movies from cable TV broadcasts and sorting those tapes alphabetically on a shelf must have had some influence on my own collector’s mentality. If you’re reading this, my journey from there probably matches your own: I learned all I could about movies and made them an integral, and often irritating, part of my personality.

I’ve also always loved writing. I tried my hand at fiction and poetry, but I really fancied myself a journalist. My defiant liberalism took shape during the George W. Bush era (era), and I found myself drawn to the work of Matt Taibbi and Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone. Since I was also playing guitar in punk bands and heavily invested in that scene, I envisioned a career in music or political journalism. That’s what I’d do: I’d live from my laptop, damning the man and celebrating the arts. After a year as a journalism major at Temple University — where I was wisely advised that the field would be dead within a decade and that I should pursue something stable — I thought about the impact my teachers had made on my life and how I might do the same for others. I got my degrees and began teaching, assuming I’d left the creative arts behind.

Luckily, my first teaching post had an open elective slot and a principal willing to let a 22-year-old kid fill it with whatever he wanted. So, with an old copy of Looking at Movies and insufficient sense to be properly terrified, I built a film study program that I’m still refining to this day. A handful of college film classes and a solid collection of Criterion discs were my only real qualifications back then, but I learned infinitely more about the movies by teaching than I ever did as a student. Around the time my son was born, I decided to invest this new expertise in a creative outlet, which led to blogs, podcasts, and a cold email to Patrick with a PDF of my portfolio and an offer to write for F This Movie. I was on my way to therapy when I read his response. I don’t have Adam’s eidetic memory, but I’ll never forget that car ride. It changed my life.

Patrick guided me to the Online Film Critics Society, who rejected my first application — they said I needed more seasoning, and they were right — but accepted me the following year. Now, what does it actually mean to be in a critics’ group, you (and my mom) ask? Why is it important? Networking, essentially. Being in a critics’ group connects you to other writers and puts you on publicists’ mailing lists. From there, you build a profile doing interviews (if that’s your thing; it was never mine), voting for year-end awards, and reviewing the smaller indie titles that membership a smaller group like that provides. OFCS was a good start, but it wasn’t until I discovered the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle that I saw an opportunity to take a step up. Again, my first application was dismissed — they said I needed more seasoning, and they were right — but after a year-long mentorship, I became an official member in 2020. I now had access to press screenings and a higher tier of studio contacts and marketing agents.

The death of screen legend James Caan (sadly) provided my next opportunity: Our local FOX television affiliate was putting together a piece on his life and career for their morning show, and PFCC founder Rich Heimlich recommended that I go on to provide a cinephile’s perspective. Less than 24 hours later, I was on TV. I’ll tell you this: Being on TV is really fun! I’m normally a pretty quiet and introverted guy, but put me in front of a crowd or a camera — or a podcast microphone, apparently — and I become a cocky, obnoxious ham. It must be working, though, because I’ve been a regular guest on Good Day Philadelphia for six years and running. In 2024, armed with a modest broadcast portfolio and recommendations from WHYY legend Patrick Stoner and Good Day’s executive producer — thanks again, Vince! — I decided to apply to the Critics Choice Association. Why? The same reason as before: More contacts, more mailing lists, and more access. This time, I was finally seasoned enough to earn membership on my first try. I am, apparently, delicious.

So what’s the day-to-day of part-time film criticism actually like? Well, I don’t work in a big newsroom, but I do get a lot of emails: Press releases about upcoming movies. Offers to interview talent. Invitations to screenings. Indie filmmakers looking for somebody, anybody, to write a kind review about their work. I watch what I can and write about what I find interesting. I don’t have time to get to every screening — which, again, is why you’re reading this — but writing each week helps me scratch that creative itch and, honestly, helps me maintain free access to something I’d otherwise be spending a lot of money on. When awards season rolls around, studios send screening copies of movies For My Consideration (as well as mountains of swag, most of which gets donated), and I cast my votes for the best of the best. My choices are always 100% correct, and I never misjudge anything or make any mistakes.

But even as my profile expands — this past year, I’ve started guesting on roundtables for our local PBS radio station — F This Movie! has been my home. I would not have any of this if not for the love and friendship of Patrick, Adam, JB, and the rest of the FTM family. TV and radio are fun, but it’s the Reserved Seatings and Redboxings that have nourished me the most. It’s the Have You Seen Anything Good Latelys and the Scary Movie Months that have kept me invested. It’s the hours spent refining that Pet Sematary: Bloodlines review that no one will read (and then annoying Patrick with a third edit when I realize I’ve missed a typo) that have kept me sharp. That’s the good stuff. The everyday stuff. Niche communities come and go, but I believe FTM remains strong because we’re consistent. Whether you click on us or not, we’ve got something new for you every single day.

Which brings me to my larger point. People ask how I became a film critic. The answer is brutally simple: I just started writing and never stopped. Yes, the internet is overflowing with loquacious film bros, and it’ll take more than a good Letterboxd account to earn real credentials, but the truth is that I had no special access. I just started writing and never stopped. Ever! You can go back through the FTM archives and read all of it! I kept writing even when it was inconvenient and I was exhausted. I kept writing even when it was shitty and I was getting rejected. I just kept making the time and doing the work. For sure, I was lucky enough to get the attention of some generous gate-openers who put me on their shoulders and helped me up the next rung of the ladder, but I still had to do the damn work. So do the damn work. You’ll hate it for a while — because it’ll be bad for a while — but sometimes the only way out is through. Actually, sometimes the only way out is a 10:30 AM press screening of DC League of Superpets, but you get the idea.

2K Replay: THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Adam Riske

Nominated for “Best Villain” (Meryl Streep) at the MTV Movie Awards. She lost to Jack Nicholson in The Departed.

• Best Scene/Moment: I like all the scenes when Anne Hathaway is running errands. I know it’s a weird choice, but she gives good frazzled and it’s cinematic to me.

• Best Song: “City of Blinding Lights” by U2. Honorable Mention: “Seven Days in Sunny June” by Jamiroquai.

• Best Merch: A “The Devil Wears Prada - Anne Hathaway Original Japanese Mini Poster…” for $21.00. I like that this poster makes Meryl Streep look less like “the devil” and more like “Hold my sunglasses, Errands Girl” and Anne Hathaway is like “One more Jenga piece, I hope I don’t fall over!”

• Director Grade: The Devil Wears Prada was directed by David Frankel.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: The Devil Wears Prada
OK Movies: Marley & Me
Bad Movies: Collateral Beauty
Unseen By Me: Miami Rhapsody, The Big Year, Hope Springs, One Chance, Jerry & Marge Go Large
Overall Grade: C+

• Double It with This 2006 Movie: The Holiday

• Year 2006 Movies to Trailer Before Them: A Good Year, Last Holiday, Stranger Than Fiction

• Ella McCay or The Devil Wears Prada? The Devil Wears Prada
• Mall Movie? No. This movie’s fancy so it would play at the fancy theater in town for a while and then move to the mall towards the end of its run as if they were clothes on clearance.

• Only in 2006: A sequence centered around tracking down the manuscript for the unreleased next Harry Potter book.

• Scene Stealer (tie): Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

• I Miss: Ritzy New York movies.

• I Don’t Miss: The threat of rising movie star Adrian Grenier.

• 2006 Crush: Anne Hathaway.

• 2026 Crush: Anne Hathaway.

• What I Thought in 2006: I watched The Devil Wears Prada mostly due to a five-alarm Hathacrush I had in the 2000s and ended up really liking the movie (which is high-energy and very entertaining). This was also where I turned the corner on Meryl Streep because before I was young and like “We get it…you’re Meryl Streep…calm down” and afterwards I was like “I get it. You’re Meryl Streep. I was the one who needed to calm down.”

• What I Think in 2026: It’s still fun and a nostalgic example of a mainstream movie professionally done and delivering everything it should and a little bit more. I’m looking forward to the sequel.

FTM 816: DISTURBING BEHAVIOR with Tyson Legg

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick is joined by ViaVision's Tyson Legg for a podcast that's totally razor.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.

Also discussed this episode: Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunted (1995), Coyote Ugly (2000), Pretty Lethal (2026), Primate (2026), Spider-Man (2002)

Johnny Showtime: THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924)

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by JB

For too long, this one flew under my radar... flew under my radar on a flying carpet!

Kino-Lorber released a new restoration of Douglas Fairbank’s silent masterpiece The Thief of Bagdad last Tuesday, and the disc is truly stunning. It features the original 1924 score by Mortimer Wilson, re-recorded and performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. The previous Cohen Media Group Blu-ray disc release featured a rousing score by Carl Davis. Of the two, I prefer both the original Wilson score and the Photoplay Productions restoration on the new Kino-Lorber disc. The image is more stable and sharper and the many tinted scenes are also more pleasing to the eye.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Handsome and charming thief Ahmed (Douglas Fairbanks) has an easy time of it in Bagdad, stealing food when he needs it and getting out of scrapes through his wits and his muscles. Thanks to a magic rope he has conveniently purloined, he finds himself in the palace one night, where he falls head over heels in love with the caliph’s daughter, the Princess (Julanne Johnston). Trouble is, to win her over, he must compete with three other suitors: the anger-management-failure Prince of the Indies (Noble Johnson); the round, firm, and fully packed Prince of Persia (Mathilde Comont); and the truly evil Prince of the Mongols (Sôjin Kamiyama).

When Ahmed is revealed to be a common thief and not a prince, it looks like all is lost. With the help of a crystal ball, a flying carpet, a magic apple, a miracle powder (not that kind) and a cloak of invisibility, Ahmed might just come out on top.

Though he is largely forgotten today, Douglas Fairbanks was once one of the most famous movie stars in the world. Shortly before making Thief, he founded United Artist Pictures with wife Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith. His productions of Robin Hood, The Mask of Zorro, The Three Musketeers, The Black Pirate, and The Thief of Bagdad once broke box-office records back when the price of admission was barely twenty-five cents.

Of his many films, Thief was Fairbanks’ personal favorite, and was one of the first silent super productions to cost more than a million dollars (roughly $19 million today). Famed art director William Cameron Menzies built sets for this film that have to be seen to be believed. They are enormous and super detailed. Although I was floored by them on my big-screen TV, I can only imagine what they looked like in 1920s movie palaces with screens four stories high. And Fairbanks uses all that real estate: watch him jump about, run around, and climb things; watch a literal cast of thousands; watch a magic carpet soar using special effects that are still impressive today; and watch yourself smile as you enjoy this wonderful boy’s adventure film.

Fairbanks is clearly the whole show here. It is rumored that he actually directed the film (Numerous production photographs show him holding a director's megaphone) though the director of record is Raoul Walsh, who would rise to fame in the sound era directing The Roaring Twenties, They Drive by Night, High Sierra, They Died with Their Boots On, Gentleman Jim, White Heat, and The Naked and the Dead. He also played John Wilkes Booth in D.W. Griffith’s famous and controversial Birth of a Nation.

Modern audiences might find the plot here strangely familiar, given that it is based on the Thousand and One Arabian Nights tales that inspired both Alexander Korda’s 1940 remake and Disney’s Aladdin. All that is missing in Fairbanks’ version is that damn genie.

I was so looking forward to this new disc. I am a big Douglas Fairbanks fan and I found previous restorations lacking. The image quality on this release is the best I have ever seen... and this is a title that I am very familiar with. Though the new Kino Lorber disc is missing the excellent 17-minute video essay Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance prepared for the earlier Cohen Media Group release, it does include a feature-length commentary track by Anthony Slide. Slide really knows the territory: beside writing more than 70 books about film, he is a member of the editorial board for the American Film Institute catalog. In columns featured in Film Review and Classic Images magazines, he has reviewed film books for more than twenty years.

Watching and enjoying this new presentation of a Douglas Fairbanks classic, I wondered aloud how many of my movie-loving friends and how many F This Movie listeners and readers enjoy silent films. I feel that any self-respecting cinephile should have the following 35 silent films in their physical media library or at least access to them digitally: The Great Train Robbery, A Trip to the Moon, the Chaplin Mutual Comedies (12 films), The Kid, The Gold Rush, The Freshman, The Lodger, The Unholy Three, The General, Safety Last, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Nosferatu, The Wind, Way Down East, Phantom of the Opera, Metropolis, Steamboat Bill Junior, The Unknown, He Who Gets Slapped, Big Business, Cops, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Thief of Bagdad.

24 Hours of Movies: Mall Movies

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Patrick Bromley

This one's for Adam Riske.

Our very own Adam Riske has codified the Mall Movie, which is a movie that would specifically play at the mall during its theatrical run. Only certain kinds of movies are mall movies. For this 24-hour marathon, we're going to interpret it more literally and program a day and night of movies with malls in them. I'm nothing if not super unoriginal. As Robin Sparkles says, let's go to the mall!

10am - Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, dir. Amy Heckerling)

We'll kick things off with one of the all-time great teen comedies and a movie that undoubtedly helped kick off 1980s mall culture. Much of the drama revolves around the Sherman Oaks Galleria, where several of the characters work and hang out. I love the way Amy Heckerling and writer Cameron Crowe use the mall as a hub where everyone gathers outside of school because this movie is anthropological in its degree of 1980s detail. The mall used to matter.

11:30am - Commando (1985, dir. Mark L. Lester)

Another appearance by the Sherman Oaks Galleria, maybe the most famous movie mall of all time outside of Monroeville. The first R-rated movie I ever saw features a memorable scene in which Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on a bunch of mall security guards, rips a phone booth out of the ground, swings down on an inflated decoration from the ceiling, and lands on top of the elevator in pursuit of David Patrick Kelly. This movie is nonstop carnage and I love it.

1pm - Scenes from a Mall (1991, dir. Paul Mazursky)

I've never actually seen this Paul Mazursky comedy because I remember the reviews being terrible when it came out in the early '90s, and considering it stars Bette Midler and Woody Allen as a married couple on the precipice of divorce, I haven't been in a big rush to see it in recent years. I guess this is my chance.

2:30pm - Jasper Mall (2020, dir. Bradford Thomason & Brett Whitcomb)

Another movie in this marathon I've never seen, this one comes recommended by Adam Riske and Rob, who covered it in a Reserved Seating back when it was released. Because so many of these mall movies are comedies and horror movies (as we'll see in a little bit), it will be nice to break things up with a documentary, even if it sounds a little bit like a downer.

4pm - Valley Girl (1983, dir. Martha Coolidge)

More mall-adjacent than mall-centric, you couldn't really have a movie called Valley Girl in the 1980s and not have at least some scenes set at the mall. I used to have some bad takes about this movie but I've grown wiser and more mature and now I it for the terrific teen comedy it is. No movie with both EG Daily and Michelle Meyrink could ever not be great. Oh, and Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman and The Plimsouls doing "The Oldest Story in the World." Every song is a banger. Now I don't want to have to wait until 4 to watch this one.

5:45pm - Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009, dir. Steve Carr)

I guess we can't really program a mall marathon and not include Paul Blart, a middling Happy Madison comedy in which Kevin James plays a mall security officer who has to do a Die Hard and stop a bunch of criminals on his own. I remember thinking this movie was probably a decent version of what it set out to be, but I had a higher Kevin James tolerance in 2009 because I used to sometimes watch The King of Queens in reruns. I never saw the sequel and we won't be watching it as part of our mall marathon. It's stolen valor.

7:30pm - Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir. George A. Romero)

Our Primetime Pizza slot goes to my favorite mall movie of all time, George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead, in which a band of survivors hole up in Pittsburgh's Monroeville Mall to escape a zombie apocalypse. I always call A Nightmare on Elm Street my favorite horror movie but maybe I'm wrong and it's Dawn of the Dead, seeing as most days it would sneak into my All Time Top 5 (not just horror). I know it's a little gory to be watching while eating but we've seen so much worse in the years since that I don't think the gore effects have quite the same impact that they did when I first saw this in high school.

10pm - Observe & Report (2009, dir. Jody Hill)

Paul Blart's much, much darker cousin, Observe & Report is one of my favorite movies of 2009 and one of my favorite comedies of the 2000s. It's a mall cop riff on Taxi Driver with a brilliant Seth Rogen performance as a disturbed wannabe cop and an even more brilliant Anna Faris as a department store employee who is also the Worst Person Alive. Big ups for one of the best comic payoffs of any movie ever. I know Jody Hill has been working in TV for the last 15 years but I wish he would make another movie because this one so, so great.

11:30pm - Chopping Mall (1986, dir. Jim Wynorski)

We'll head into the overnight with a series of mall horror movies beginning with Jim Wynorski's second-best film about killer robots stalking some teens spending the night in the mall. For what it is, this movie kind of rips: the score is great, there are some really good kill scenes (dat exploding head), and the cast that includes Kelli Maroney, Barbara Crampton, Dick Miller, Paul Bartel, and Mary Woronov elevate all of it. We could do way worse for mall horror. It's called Hide and Go Shriek.

1am - Night of the Comet (1984, dir. Thom Eberhardt)

One of my favorite '80s movies finds sister Kelli Maroney (back to back KM!) and Catherine Mary Stewart surviving the apocalypse and taking over the mall after everyone's gone. Part teen fantasy, part science fiction, part horror movie, all radical, Night of the Comet rules and will keep us going as everything gets a little dire overnight.

3am - Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989, dir. Richard Friedman)

I have a pretty high tolerance for '80s slashers so I don't mind Phantom of the Mall, but this is probably the dregs of our 24-hour marathon. As '80s updates of Phantom of the Opera are concerned, we'd be much better off with Dwight H. Little's remake. But that's not set in a mall! This one is and stars Pauly Shore in a supporting role. I wish I liked it more than I do, but as watchable trash in the middle of the night it's totally serviceable.

4:45am - Security (2017, dir. Alain DesRochers)

The last of my unseen movies of the marathon, this is one I honestly had never heard of before Googling a list of "mall movies." Antonio Banderas plays a former Marine turned mall cop who has to lead a team of security guards against a bunch of mercenaries (led by Ben Kingsley) who invade the mall. Sounds quite a bit like Paul Blart done as a straight action movie. Whatever, I'm down, especially at this time of the morning.

6:30am - Dawn of the Dead (2004, dir. Zack Snyder)

George Romero's Dawn of the Dead is so good that we can program the remake into the same marathon and not even feel like we're watching the same movie twice, mostly because this new version really only has "mall" and "zombies" in common with the original. I still really enjoy the Zack Snyder-directed, James Gunn-scripted remake as a movie about nothing but visceral jumps and surface-level scares, which is why it will probably be fun to wake up to after the overnight section. The cast is good and the thing moves like a running zombie.

8:30am - Mallrats (1995, dir. Kevin Smith)

We'll close out our marathon with Kevin Smith's ode to the mall and to '80s movies, featuring a sublime and star-making performance by Jason Lee. As someone who grew up on indies in the '90s, I'll always have a soft spot for Kevin Smith and his '90s run including Mallrats, but I can still recognize it's not all that great despite its reputation as a beloved cult classic. I've seen it so many times (the early DVD is one of my all-time favorites) and pretty much know it by heart, so this will be a big warm blanket of a closer for our marathon.

Meet me at Auntie Anne's!

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:00:00 -0500