Peak Viewing

Babe wake up, a new Benoit Blanc mystery came out! Wake Up Dead Man is a movie with a lot of things on it’s mind: faith, truth, pragmatism, confession, Our Current Moment, judgment, guilt, compassion, sheep, wolves, all wrapped up in an extremely well told Biblical allegory. We’re big fans, even if we have a qualm or two. After making sure we spoil the ending of the movie in the first five minutes, we discuss induction stoves, using VHS tapes in 2025, Hillbilly Elegy, Netflix buying Warner Brothers, and much more.

Mean Streets feels like an upgrade in (almost) every way from Scorsese’s first film, continuing a lot of the same kinds of characters and situations we saw there. Neither of us have been wowed yet in this miniseries, but we’re certainly getting a better idea of what Scorsese is all about! We also talk about directors and their fetishes, how hard it is to exercise, working with friends, and the lack of resolution in this film. We also do our best to not devolve into stereotypical Italian-American accents, and let’s just say we did not always succeed!

Scorsese’s second film is similar to his first, in the sense that we can really only recommend it for completionism purposes. Outside of a few very impressive stylistic flourishes, the bulk of this movie is exploitation sensuality and violence. If that’s your thing, you’ll have a great time! If you wish the titular Bertha and her interiority were the focus, you’ll be let down! Other topics discussed include the sketchy origins around the source book, the board game Monopoly, Samuel’s new last name, car aerodynamics, and the eternal question: is it better to be nailed to the cross through your wrists or your palms?

Martin Scorsese, arguably one of the greatest living filmmakers, is an embarrassingly large blind spot for the both of us. To remedy this, our next miniseries will cover the first half or so of his career, of which we have seen very little! (Like, almost nothing. It’s bad.) While his first film Who’s That Knocking at My Door won’t be one we wholeheartedly recommend, it is interesting groundwork for a lot of the themes and styles we expect to come up. Just don’t ask us to fly to Europe and insert a sex scene into the middle of this podcast.

Settle in and pour yourself a tall glass of milk, it’s time to talk about Guillermo del Toro’s new Frankenstein adaptation! This Netflix original is all peaks and valleys for us; some parts work, many parts do not. Some moments offer interesting twists on the novel, and some story beats unique to this film have us scratching our heads. We get into all of that, including our final ranking of Frankenstein films, and the announcement of our next miniseries!

Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is… kind of amazing? We’re not exactly shocked that culture has spent the past 30 years ignoring this movie, but we’re certainly disappointed. This loud, melodramatic adaptation of the monster story is not only the most faithful in terms of plot, but also in terms of tone. As a result, we’re big fans! Just don’t ask us what was going on with those eels in the leathery sac. Other topics include the prevalence of canine cruelty in our movies this year, Freudian adult film genres, and yet another haunting supernatural event live on the air.

Two years ago, we watched Hammer’s rendition of The Mummy, and we were not impressed. One year ago, we watched Hammer’s rendition of Dracula, and we were blown away! This week, we watched Hammer’s rendition of Frankenstein, and we were, uh, somewhere in the middle? Between the frankly bad monster makeup, the lazy storylines, and the incredible mad scientist lab, it’s safe to say we have mixed feelings. We also get into buying Peter Cushing as a 22-year-old ladies man, the changes with the monster from the novel, and our brilliant idea for a new podcast.

Bride of Frankenstein is a solid contender for the most unhinged sequel of all time. It’s a marvelous blend of humor, horror, whimsy, and sadness that keeps you on your toes every minute. There’s little lab-grown people in jars, interesting reinterpretations of scenes from the novel, a picnic in a tomb, and almost five minutes of screen time for the titular character! We get into it all, including James Whale’s terrific imagination, the censor’s terrible buffoonery, Elsa Lanchester’s towering hairdo, and much more.

Monsters are back on the menu! After we had a grand time covering Dracula and Nosferatu films last year, this year we’re talking about Frankenstein to coincide with Guillermo Del Toro’s new spin on the old classic. We’re starting with 1931’s Frankenstein, the James Whale film that arguably set the standard for what Frankenstein would mean more so than the original novel. You better believe we’ve got everything in this jam-packed episode. Simpsons references! Quotes from passages in the novel! Stories about little girls and hard-boiled eggs! Listen for our hour-long “speed run” recap of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, and don’t forget: the scientist is named Frankenstein.

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World might be the most underseen movie we’ve covered on this show (well, maybe the most underseen this century). Part of that obscurity is due to the Islamophobic times in which it was created, and part of it is that it’s simply just okay at best. Some of the questions we do our best to answer this week include: Could we write a 500-page report? How well did this movie perform in Romania? Why do we keep bringing up so many Coen brothers movies? Is Tiger Woods the Michael Jordan of golf? And how much of this thing is even shot in India?

Is Albert Brooks losing his edge? It’s the question posited by 1999’s The Muse, in which Brooks plays a screenwriter who feels left behind in a frustrating and absurd Hollywood. As he tells a story that would seem to be inspired by his own life, we find ourselves more disinterested than in previous films. Naturally, we take that feeling and channel it into several off-topic tangents! Mobile games that no one has ever played! Debates over covering Avatar: Fire and Ash! Something about a comedian named James Carr! And also, quite possibly the most diabolical Would You Rather scenario of all time.

Brooks follow-up to Defending Your Life is a smaller, simpler movie about what gets passed on from mother to son. As two sons of two mothers, we have some takes! While this is ultimately perhaps the least-relatable to us of this miniseries, we still discuss Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds’ chemistry, the multiple references to movies we’ve covered on this show, off-brand Snickers, document storage, calling your mother, and of course, all the mediocre songs in Mary Poppins.

As Ari Aster put it, Defending Your Life is “the feel-good movie for people who identify as feeling routinely bad.” Albert Brooks vision of the afterlife may be fully realized and wondrous, but it’s what it has to say about our own plane of existence that is really profound. We discuss everything about it, along with what clips would play at our own trials, the one or two poorly aged jokes, and how Henry almost died this week.

This week we talk about Lost in America, the mid-life crisis movie to end all mid-life crisis movies. Albert Brooks is skewering baby boomers who watched Easy Rider one too many times, and we’re asking the big questions. What age do you have to be to consider it a “mid-life” crisis? How much is the nest egg in 2025 dollars? What’s the deal with New York, New York? Could you live in a Winnebago long-term? And what’s the right age to watch Airplane?

Picture a man. Now give him all of the worst, most awful (non-violent) possessive traits you can imagine. Now picture a movie all about this man, and you might have something approximating Albert Brooks’ sophomore feature, Modern Romance. This damning indictment of the modern dating man was written decades before terms like “toxic masculinity” entered our everyday vocabulary, and for that reason it has an almost timeless quality to its satire. In between groaning over this man, we also discuss the fun meta filmmaking scenes, the terrible DVD cover, and how much Henry’s couch looks like the one in the movie.

Today we embark on a journey through the comedies of Albert Brooks. His first film, 1979’s Real Life, is a wonderful send up of reality TV, a genre of entertainment that effectively didn’t even exist yet! We discuss the myriad of ways this movie was ahead of it’s time, the interconnected web of alt comedians in this time period, a few embarrassing film blinds spots we still have, and of course, the Jumbotron CEO.

We’re taking one last dip into the Coens filmography with Ethan and Tricia’s new film Honey Don’t! This may not exactly be a "great" movie, but it’s enough of a step-up from Drive-Away Dolls that we both walked away somewhat impressed. We share our observations on audience reactions, IMDb plot keyword sickos, the hottest new addictive mobile game, and how we can no longer trust our own moviegoing opinions.

Tony Scott’s 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 is unfortunately the kind of remake that has all the edges sanded off. What was once a story about corruption and scorn in the hearts of all men has been retooled into a tale of just two men, one on a righteous path and the other tumbling down the crime-ridden ravine. Are they different? Are they the same? What was Henry’s secret agenda from last week? Why did Bill Clinton endorse Cuomo? And what the hell is MovieIQ?!

Our shortest miniseries to date focuses on two films, the original from the 1970s and the remake in the late aughts. This week we’re talking about 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the original story of criminals hijacking a New York subway car. Samuel read the book, and he’s disturbed! Henry heard the dialogue, and he’s delighted! We discuss the flavorful style of this movie, from the performances to the music, and tease a secret agenda behind this miniseries…

Now that we’re done with the movies Joel and Ethan Coen made together, we move on to the “solo” projects. We already covered The Tragedy of Macbeth last year as part of our Denzel Washington miniseries, so it’s on to Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls, a lesbian road comedy made with his wife Tricia Cooke. This movie (which we both found to be equal parts strange, funny, and bad) has its fair share of topic starters, so please enjoy our unhinged discussion on character actor cameos, southern accents, lesbian bars, and, of course, dildos. Way more dildo discussion than you would probably expect.