Peak Viewing

Many aspects of The King of Comedy (now over 40 years old) feel incredibly timeless. It’s a story of fanaticism and parasocial relationships that feels possibly more relevant today in the age of the internet than it did in the age of television personalities. We discuss this unique brand of cringe comedy, Scorsese’s slightly more subtle stylistic touches, office layouts, and come up with a bunch of great ways to mispronounce Rupert Pupkin. Plus: the final (?) segment of “Free Streaming Service Ads Breakdown!”

Last week we bet big that Raging Bull would be the first truly amazing film of this miniseries. And this week, we’re pleased to say: we were correct! Everything seems to have come together at just the right time for this to be a truly stunning work of art: Robert De Niro’s passion, Martin Scorsese’s redemption, and Thelma Schoonmaker’s pitch-perfect editing. And that’s before we even get to Joe Pesci! We also discuss the best movie-within-a-movie movies, our embarrassing lack of familiarity with Stallone, Viola Davis’ interest in cats acting, and some theory on why black and white and color in film usually don’t mix well.

If you find yourself trying to watch the currently un-streamable film New York, New York, it’s recommended you take a break every time you can’t stand De Niro anymore. Unfortunately, the troubled nature of this movie’s production—Scorsese’s cocaine addiction and extramartial affair, Minelli’s discomfort with improv, De Niro’s obsessive method acting—seeps into the final product, resulting in a movie so uncomfortable that the fantastic music and brilliant final act is not enough to save it. We try to come to terms with these mixed feelings, along with how this fits into Lucille 2’s backstory, why Damien Chazelle is clearly so influenced by this film, and how much we’re cashing all our chips in on next week’s movie.

They said it couldn’t be done. They said two cis white men who liked movies couldn’t make it to 28 years of age without having seen Taxi Driver. And yet somehow that was true, until this week. Let’s just say right now is, uh, not the best time to be watching a movie from the perspective of a troubled, violent, lonely male figure, and as a result we’re not too thrilled about this film. Thankfully we’ve packed this episode with as many tangent-spawning questions as possible, including: how much money is Travis Bickle making? Why did Ron Howard name his kids like that? How does one become superstitious? Why are we so bad at guessing children’s ages? How many “gangster” movies have we seen thus far this miniseries? Why does Samuel not watch anime if he’s already read the manga? And maybe most pointlessly: what sorts of ads does Pluto show when you watch this movie?

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is Scorsese’s second (and ostensibly last) movie to center around a female protagonist, showing off a more sincere side to his filmmaking that we don’t always see. Alice’s struggles (beautiful rendered by an Oscar winning performance from Ellen Burstyn) have a timeless quality to them, even if aspects of the ending feel quite dated. We get into all that as well as personal stories of food poisoning, walking home alone, and eating in locally owned diners. Also, we misremember Talia Shire’s role in The Godfather!

As the year 2025 starts to wind down and we look back, we gotta say: not a lot of good stuff happened this year! Despite that, we both came to the table this week with a list of some of our favorite art that came out in this year. Join and listen to us ramble about puzzle games, YouTube essays, LEGO sets, JRPGs, sad indie music, Warhammer podcasts, books about lonely people, and a very very large baby.

James Cameron’s long-awaited third Avatar film is here, and it sure looks and sounds a lot like the last one! Rather than simply re-release our Way of Water episode (which we could do given how similar these two films are), we come to you this week with all our freshest takes on Fire and Ash, AI-generated commercials, Odyssey trailers, franchise subtitling, hair on Pandora, legs on snakes and whales, and Verang’s whole freaky deal. Plus, a collective fifteen minutes of banter centered around Spider’s bladder.

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.