We’re still working on getting a regular schedule going, and even though this was meant to be a shorter episode specifically for the Dune II synopsis, we end up chatting about Denis Villeneuve’s next entry in the apparently ongoing saga of Timothee Chalamet’s conquest of the universe and our hearts.
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which is an absolute delight and one of my favorite games in a long time, has four main things going for it. The first and most immediately obvious is Metropolis, the glittering comic book city where Superman makes his home, an emblem of Silver Age comics if ever there was one.
Rocksteady, the developer who took us inside Arkham Asylum and then built an entire Gotham for their Batman games, has done it again. This time they’ve built a vast, dense, brightly candy-colored Metropolis…and then trashed it. An alien invasion has almost entirely depopulated the city. Its highways are empty and its flying cars are grounded. Walkways and rooftops are littered with the dead in the form of gray ash statues frozen in mid-panic. Drones hoover up hidden survivors to bring them to the mothership. Alien tanks trundle down the highways and patrols roam the streets or squat sullenly on rooftops. Occupation. An eerily abandoned, tattered and beaten utopia, brimming with shredded detail. And given that this is a morality inversion — in Suicide Squad, bad guys are good guys, and vice versa — it all carries the whiff of some dormant fascism. Bioshock: Infinite never had it so good. Now get in there and open-world to your heart’s content!
Continue reading →
We’re doing something a bit different this time, discussing a very strange and strangely compelling British comedy/thriller that Kellywand calls a “What’s going on?” show. It’s technically a six-episode miniseries but if you watch it all at once — which we recommend — it’s just like a three-hour movie! What kind of movie? Well, that’s quite the question.
Up next: We’ll be revisiting two of our top ten picks from 2023. They Cloned Tyrone next week, and Poor Things the week after. And after that, we’re hitting the theaters to see Dune. We hope you’ll join us!
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
When it comes to bees, the latest Jason Statham vehicle gives us a lot to think about. While Statham does the hard work of administering punches, we ponder the implications of beekeeping as a metaphor for world stability. What have we learned and how can we make this world a better place for bees and people? Listen and find out!
Up next: Am I Being Unreasonable?
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
We don’t actually know the top ten movies of 2023. But we can talk about our ten favorites! We’ll also tell you our most surprising, our most disappointing, our favorite little thingies, and our guesses at what movie Dingus would have picked. Get comfy, because it’s going to take us three and a half hours.
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
When a giant lizard wades ashore and lays waste to Tokyo, we can’t very well NOT podcast about it.
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
It’s no revelation that some old timey songs can have a sinister subtext. One of my many issues with Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, a predictable and ultimately pedestrian mystery, is how coy she seems to think she’s being with her old timey public-domain soundtrack. For instance, the movie opens with the music to “Where or When”, an innocuous little Rodgers and Hart ditty about deja vu. The main characters are literally driving in a circle. Peggy Lee begins singing eventually:
It seems we stood and talked like this before
We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can’t remember where or when
Then an earthquake cuts her off. What could it mean?
Continue reading →
Write ‘n’ Fight has every sign of being a gag instead of an actual game. And even if it is an actual game, it’s just a very very indie fighting game. But as far as gags go, I’ve seen a lot worse than shirtless Hemingway stylishly fending off Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s infamous right hook. “REFLECTION CAPTURES NEED TO BE REBUILT,” Hemingway thinks urgently.
According to an email bcc’ed to me from a Gmail account claiming to represent the game, Write ‘n’ Fight will be released on Steam tomorrow morning for 40% less than whatever undisclosed price it will cost. And the only reason I’m curious about it — Lovecraft wouldn’t have stood a chance against shirtless Hemingway — is because there’s apparently a turn-based mode where you and your opponent enter a string of moves that are then executed in order. Which is exactly how I like to play my fighting games: while I’m doing something else instead.
Director Jaume Collet-Serra gave the original Orphan the Hitchcockian touches it needed to be more than just a throwaway evil kid movie. And it had a great cast. Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga know what they’re doing. But what made Orphan stand out was Isabelle Fuhrman’s performance. She was a new kind of evil kid. So innocent looking, of course, but so off-kilter with the Little Bo Peep ruffled dresses, the lace choker and ribbons around her wrists, and the Estonian accent. Who even knows what an Estonian accent sounds like? But the diminutive Miss Fuhrman — she was 11 years old when they shot Orphan in 2006 — was a powerhouse, and she carried the movie with ease. (To see her carry another movie, check out The Novice from 2021. She shows off a physical intensity you usually only get with action movies and fight scenes.)
So it’s great that she’s back in an Orphan sequel, right? Well, kind of. Since her character died at the end of the first movie, this has to be a prequel. But the actress is an adult now, so how can she play Esther, who is a couple years younger than she was in the original? I mean, yeah, the twist is that she’s a grown woman trapped in a child’s body, but no one would look at Isabelle Fuhrman today and mistake her for an eleven-year-old child, much less a nine-year-old child.
So Orphan: First Kill made the, uh, interesting decision to cheat.
Continue reading →
Nope writer and director Jordan Peele seems to like horror movies as much as we do. We’re divided on this particular one, but at least we agree we saw something we’d never seen in a movie before. Given our long and storied careers watching movies, that’s quite an accomplishment!
Up next: Prey
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
When I need food, I drive past the local grocery at the bottom of my hill and hang a right on the way to the Von’s, a chain supermarket farther down the boulevard. But today I just need bananas and I’m not driving through a half dozen stoplights just for dang bananas. I will, however, drive to the local grocery at the bottom of the hill. So, hello again, local grocery. I haven’t seen you since I realized you don’t carry kale. On this muggy summer weekday afternoon, I’m here for a couple of whatever sad bananas you’ve got in your bin, hopefully more yellow than black.
Continue reading →
Tom Chick and Kelly Wand have spent their lives wrestling with David Cronenberg movies. Why stop now? Suffice it to say, we each bring a lot of baggage to Cronenberg’s latest.
Up next: Nope
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Welcome to the single most extensively researched episode of the Quarter to Three Movie Podcast. Tom Chick and Kelly Wand have pored over the source material for Taika Waititi’s latest Thor and they bring their expertise to bear in an extensive discussion of space vikings, theology, magic weapons, god butchery, kids, and comic books. You have been warned. Speaking of warning you about things, we also saw Black Phone, which we start talking about at the 1-hour, 24-minute mark.
Up next: Crimes of the Future
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt co-wrote a script for Thelma, which Trier directed. Now Vogt has written and directed his own script for The Innocents, which has a lot in common with Thelma. We take advantage of the overlap for a twofer podcast on Thelma and The Innocents, and according to Tom Chick, you should watch Thelma first. According to Kelly Wand– Wait, what’s going on? Something’s…off.
Up next: Thor: Love and Thunder
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Parody games don’t have a great track record. Most of them are cash-grab garbage that fail to successfully mimic the game they are spoofing. Like parody movies, the best ones are good genre products on their own merits while they poke fun of other titles. Here then is The Looker from Subcreation Studio, a largely one-man outfit consisting of Bradley Lovell.
The Looker’s inspiration is immediately obvious, but there’s a lot more going on. The Witness doesn’t just get targeted. Other games like Layers of Fear take their licks too. It’s a free game, so there’s not much to risk but time and your sense of humor. Keep in mind that it’s all a joke. Hardcore puzzle aficionados need not apply.
