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F This Movie! — TV & Film
F This Movie!

Movie love for movie lovers.

Latest Episodes:

Reserved Seating: WILLOW Jun 05, 2025
The review duo (with special guests Margo Donohue and Sonia Mansfield!) who are Mad about Martigan.

Junesploitation 2025 Day 5: Magic! Jun 05, 2025

FTM 774: SHAFT (1971) Jun 04, 2025
Patrick and JB are just talking about Shaft (shut your mouth).
Download this episode here.
Subscribe to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.
Also discussed this episode: Friendship (2025), Cleaner (2025), Pee-Wee as Himself (2025), Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

Junesploitation 2025 Day 4: Blaxploitation! Jun 04, 2025

Johnny Showtime: DEATH RACE 2000 Jun 03, 2025
by JB
How’d you like to see Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu play Frankenstein?
My humble viewing suggestion for Junesploitation today is Death Race 2000, one of over 250 films made by WORKING ACTOR IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS David Carradine. Carradine amassed an impressive list of credits in the 45 years that he was a professional actor. His career took a wild detour into direct-to-video action films in the mid-Eighties: Oceans of Fire (1986), Armed Response (1986), The Misfit Brigade (1987), Six Against the Rock (1987), I Saw What You Did (1988), Run for Your Life (1988), Warlords (1988), Tropical Snow (1989), The Cover Girl and the Cop (1989), Sonny Boy (1989),Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II (1989), Nowhere to Run (1989), Crime Zone (1990), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Try This One for Size (1989), Open Fire (1989), Future Force (1989), direct-to-video Swedish action movie The Mad Bunch (1989), Night Children (1989), Crime of Crimes (1989), Animal Protector (1989), Dune Warriors (1990), Martial Law (1990), The Trace of Lynx (1990), Future Zone (1990), Fatal Secret (1990), Midnight Fear (1991), Project Eliminator (1991), Deadly Surveillance (1991), Brotherhood of the Gun (1991), The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), Capital Punishment (1991), Karate Cop (1991), Battle Gear (1991), Evil Toons (1992), Double Trouble (1992), Roadside Prophets (1992), Night Rhythms (1992), Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), and Distant Justice (1992).
Feel free to watch ANY OF THOSE FORTY-TWO FILMS AS WELL. Whew!I first saw Death Race 2000 when I was in college at one of those late, lamented campus screenings that cable television and streaming services later put out of business. This was the early Eighties and campus groups would show movies on the weekends to raise money. The Official Office of Campus Space Utilization and Parking (or whatever the fuck it was called) would allow registered campus groups to use lecture halls on the weekends for free. Said group would beg, borrow, or steal a projector, rent a film from Films Inc. or Universal 16, print up some handbills, and count the cash. I can’t begin to describe what these screenings did for my filmic education. My first weekend on campus, I saw 17 films. One of them was Death Race 2000.
The film’s arch irony, broad humor, and extreme violence played well to the undergraduate crowd. Did I mention that most screenings were only $2.00?
I am old.THE PLOT IN BRIEF: In the year 2000, the American government has become a totalitarian regime. It creates a televised Transcontinental Road Race to provide citizens with gladiator-like spectacle and bloody catharsis. By keeping them busy with violent sporting events, the Government hopes citizens will be mollified into forgetting organized rebellion. In fact, the reason Roger Corman wanted to produce this film was to take advantage of the prerelease publicity and hype surrounding Rollerball (1975), a film with very similar themes. Death Race 2000 beat Rollerball to American screens by three months.
The race car drivers themselves are all overblown stereotypes: Frankenstein (David Carradine) is the favorite to win; other drivers include Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone, the year before Rocky made him a star), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins), Nero the Hero (Martin Kove), and Herman the German (Fred Grandy, two years before The Love Boat). Beside the competition of the road race, drivers are encouraged to both kill each other and run over innocent pedestrians to rack up bonus points. It’s a bloody spectacle.Few films are more June-sploitationey than Death Race 2000. Junesploitation was invented to encourage watching Death Race 2000, or maybe the other way around. We have trenchant social satire, crazy custom cars, outrageous stunts, full frontal nudity, a zippy pace, Radio DJ the Real Don Steel functioning as a Greek Chorus, cult favorite Harriet White Medin as Thomasina Paine... the list goes on and on. As Danny Peary points out in his invaluable Cult Movies books, Death Race 2000 is one of the only non-documentary American films in which a sitting President is dispatched. Peter Fonda turned down the lead role because he said the script was too ridiculous to actually film. David Carradine accepted the lead role because he needed something to “wash Kung Fu out of the public’s memory.”
Funniest line? “It’s a hand grenade.” To get the joke, you have to see the film.

Johnny Showtime: DEATH RACE 2000 Jun 03, 2025
by JB
How’d you like to see Kwai Chang Caine from Kung Fu play Frankenstein?
My humble viewing suggestion for Junesploitation today is Death Race 2000, one of over 250 films made by WORKING ACTOR IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS David Carradine. Carradine amassed an impressive list of credits in the 45 years that he was a professional actor. His career took a wild detour into direct-to-video action films in the mid-Eighties: Oceans of Fire (1986), Armed Response (1986), The Misfit Brigade (1987), Six Against the Rock (1987), I Saw What You Did (1988), Run for Your Life (1988), Warlords (1988), Tropical Snow (1989), The Cover Girl and the Cop (1989), Sonny Boy (1989),Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II (1989), Nowhere to Run (1989), Crime Zone (1990), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Try This One for Size (1989), Open Fire (1989), Future Force (1989), direct-to-video Swedish action movie The Mad Bunch (1989), Night Children (1989), Crime of Crimes (1989), Animal Protector (1989), Dune Warriors (1990), Martial Law (1990), The Trace of Lynx (1990), Future Zone (1990), Fatal Secret (1990), Midnight Fear (1991), Project Eliminator (1991), Deadly Surveillance (1991), Brotherhood of the Gun (1991), The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), Capital Punishment (1991), Karate Cop (1991), Battle Gear (1991), Evil Toons (1992), Double Trouble (1992), Roadside Prophets (1992), Night Rhythms (1992), Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), and Distant Justice (1992).
Feel free to watch ANY OF THOSE FORTY-TWO FILMS AS WELL. Whew!I first saw Death Race 2000 when I was in college at one of those late, lamented campus screenings that cable television and streaming services later put out of business. This was the early Eighties and campus groups would show movies on the weekends to raise money. The Official Office of Campus Space Utilization and Parking (or whatever the fuck it was called) would allow registered campus groups to use lecture halls on the weekends for free. Said group would beg, borrow, or steal a projector, rent a film from Films Inc. or Universal 16, print up some handbills, and count the cash. I can’t begin to describe what these screenings did for my filmic education. My first weekend on campus, I saw 17 films. One of them was Death Race 2000.
The film’s arch irony, broad humor, and extreme violence played well to the undergraduate crowd. Did I mention that most screenings were only $2.00?
I am old.THE PLOT IN BRIEF: In the year 2000, the American government has become a totalitarian regime. It creates a televised Transcontinental Road Race to provide citizens with gladiator-like spectacle and bloody catharsis. By keeping them busy with violent sporting events, the Government hopes citizens will be mollified into forgetting organized rebellion. In fact, the reason Roger Corman wanted to produce this film was to take advantage of the prerelease publicity and hype surrounding Rollerball (1975), a film with very similar themes. Death Race 2000 beat Rollerball to American screens by three months.
The race car drivers themselves are all overblown stereotypes: Frankenstein (David Carradine) is the favorite to win; other drivers include Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone, the year before Rocky made him a star), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins), Nero the Hero (Martin Kove), and Herman the German (Fred Grandy, two years before The Love Boat). Beside the competition of the road race, drivers are encouraged to both kill each other and run over innocent pedestrians to rack up bonus points. It’s a bloody spectacle.Few films are more June-sploitationey than Death Race 2000. Junesploitation was invented to encourage watching Death Race 2000, or maybe the other way around. We have trenchant social satire, crazy custom cars, outrageous stunts, full frontal nudity, a zippy pace, Radio DJ the Real Don Steel functioning as a Greek Chorus, cult favorite Harriet White Medin as Thomasina Paine... the list goes on and on. As Danny Peary points out in his invaluable Cult Movies books, Death Race 2000 is one of the only non-documentary American films in which a sitting President is dispatched. Peter Fonda turned down the lead role because he said the script was too ridiculous to actually film. David Carradine accepted the lead role because he needed something to “wash Kung Fu out of the public’s memory.”
Funniest line? “It’s a hand grenade.” To get the joke, you have to see the film.

Junesploitation 2025 Day 3: David Carradine! Jun 03, 2025

Friday Night Double Features Vol. 54 Jun 02, 2025
by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley
10 new double features to reward your exemplary report card.
Double Feature 1:
Adam: #1: Christmas Evil (1980)
Patrick: #2: Santa Claws (1996)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, “Treevenge,” All Through the House, Terrifier 3
Patrick: Theme: Trash Christmas
Patrick: I would never actually call Christmas Evil “trash” because it’s actually good, but it is sleazy and weird and has the best last shot of any movie ever. Santa Claws, on the other hand, is actual trash in that it sucks but also is trashy, full of nudity and poorly done violence courtesy of John Russo and Bill Hinzman of Night of the Living Dead fame. I’m programming it because I thought it would be fun to do a night of Christmas horror that’s not the obvious choices and because I’m hoping Debbie Rochon will show up. I’ve had a crush on that siren since the ‘90s.
Adam: I need you, Mike, and Adam Thas for this one. You’re my Pizza Hut “trash” crew. Christmas Evil is so damn good, and I trust you with Santa Claws, which I vaguely know of, I think, I could be wrong (checks…I was thinking of a different movie). The fact it’s from Bill Hinzman gets my hopes up because I once saw his movie FleshEater at the Music Box of Horrors and it’s really entertaining in a trashy way. I’ll hold a seat for Debbie Rochon for when she shows up.
Double Feature 2:
Patrick: #1: At Close Range (1986)
Adam: #2: Vision Quest (1985)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Desperately Seeking Susan, Who’s That Girl, A League of Their Own, “Live to Tell,” “Gambler” and “Crazy for You” music videos
Adam: Theme: Madonna Has a Great Song on the Soundtrack
Adam: At Close Range is great and I’d love to rewatch it soon as a tribute to the late director James Foley. I’m happy you programmed it. I went with Vision Quest for the second feature because I love that movie, and I wanted something dramatic but more upbeat to chase At Close Range which is capital SAD. “Live to Tell” and “Crazy for You” are two of my favorite Madonna songs, so having a night where we feature her music in films with trailers and music videos would be fun.
Patrick: I’m sad about James Foley. Until he started making 50 Shades movies, he was a very dependable filmmaker with a lot of movies I really like. At Close Range is one of his very best. I love the Madonna theme because both of these songs are great. “Live to Tell” might be my favorite Madonna, but I’m not sure if that’s because I like the movie it’s from so much or if it’s just that good of a song. “Crazy for You” is a close second. “I’ll Remember” might be third, proof that I only like Madonna songs from movies. But not “Die Another Day.” Never “Die Another Day.”
Double Feature 3:Adam: #1: Little Buddha (1993)
Patrick: #2: A Dirty Shame (2004)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: “Wicked Game” video, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, That Thing You Do!, Chris Isaak Show “Pilot”
Patrick: Theme: Starring Chris Isaak
Patrick: I’ve always liked Chris Isaak as a singer but he’s kind of a good actor, too. I think he started out getting bit parts in Jonathan Demme movies because they were friends but eventually worked his way up to supporting roles and even leads in stuff like Little Buddha, which remains one of my unseen Keanu movies. It seems a little like homework, so I slotted John Waters’ A Dirty Shame after it because it seems like the Chris Isaak movie that’s furthest away in terms of tone and content. I’m hoping Debbie Rochon shows up to this, too, not because she’s in either of the movies (she isn’t) but because I want there to always be an open seat for her at the Cinemarink.
Adam: She will. Don’t worry. Little Buddha brings in all the celebrities. It’s like a Knicks game. Chris Isaak is always good in movies. He’s like your Harry Connick, Jr. (for me)! They’re both naturals. I feel like Little Buddha is still playing at One Schaumburg Place. I don’t know why. I just remember very vividly that it played there. Watch, I’ll check and it was Rolling Meadows. I’m way behind on seeing John Waters movies so I’m glad I can check one off the list here.
Double Feature 4:
Patrick: #1: Any Given Sunday (1999)
Adam: #2: Wall Street (1987)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Platoon, Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July, Nixon, World Trade Center
Adam: Theme: Stone & McGinley
Adam: Even when I was in grade school, I liked John C. McGinley for some reason. Maybe because he’s like if Fozzie Bear were in an Oliver Stone movie. He just seemed like a goofy dude on screen most of the time. I still like him a lot now and it’s a good excuse to watch some Oliver Stone movies I love because Oliver Stone no longer gives me an excuse to watch Oliver Stone movies. Any Given Sunday and Wall Street are two of his most purely entertaining so this should sell out the Cinemarink I think. Rhyming is fun.
Patrick: As a former Scrubs guy, I’m a big John C. McGinley fan, too. He has an energy unlike any other actor. I get why Oliver Stone used him so much. Speaking of which, Oliver Stone had such a run in the ‘80s and ‘90s that it’s a shame he sucks so hard now. This would be an incredible night at the movies.
Double Feature 5:Adam: #1: Shall We Dance? (1996)
Patrick: #2: The Departed (2006)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Shall We Dance? (2004), Infernal Affairs (2002)
Patrick: Theme: Remake Swap
Patrick: I had a tough time here so I went with an easy theme. I’ve never seen the Japanese Shall We Dance? and I’ve never seen Infernal Affairs so at least I can see the trailer for the latter before The Departed, a movie for which I’m always in the mood. Martin Scorsese is kind of good.
Adam: I’m a huge fan of the Japanese Shall We Dance? so getting it on the Cinemarink screen makes me happy. It’s the type of movie I’d want to share with people since it’s such a crowd pleaser. So is The Departed, which is super commercial and easy to like. Honestly, I think this night would really go over well despite the movies being so different. Nice work, bud.
Double Feature 6:
Patrick: #1: Videodrome (1983)
Adam: #2: Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Network, Switching Channels, UHF
Adam: Theme: Television Stations
Adam: I went in a few different directions with the theme for this one but landed on TV stations because it’s a subgenre I enjoy unlike something like plane movies or hostage movies. I really need to rewatch Switching Channels. I remember loving that on cable as a kid. I didn’t book it second because it makes more sense to put two horror films together. Is Videodrome one of your favorite Cronenbergs? I need to revisit it but right now it’s in the second tier for me behind The Fly (1986), A History of Violence, and The Dead Zone.
Patrick: I would never make the case that Videodrome is Cronenberg’s best movie (that’s probably The Fly), but it might be my favorite. Pairing it with Dawn of the Dead means we’re doubling two of the best horror movies ever made, so this night is bulletproof.
Double Feature 7:Adam: #1: Stand By Me (1986)
Patrick: #2: Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: The Shawshank Redemption, Hearts in Atlantis, The Running Man (1986)
Patrick: Theme: Non-Horror Stephen King
Patrick: Stephen King remains my favorite author – he has been for my whole life – and I love the movies based on his work, even the bad ones. Sometimes especially the bad ones. It will be cool to devote a night to his non-horror offerings. Stand By Me is basically a perfect movie and Dolores Claiborne is super underrated, so hopefully we can make some fans of the second when they come in to see the first.
Adam: This will be a great warm-up for The Life of Chuck, which is one of my most anticipated movies of the summer. I love all Stephen King film adaptations, but especially have a soft spot for his non-horror. This is a really good pairing. They both have a leisurely pace that will go well together.
Double Feature 8:
Patrick: #1: Christmas in July (1940)
Adam: #2: Remember the Night (1940)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: All I Want for Christmas, Scrooged, White Christmas
Adam: Theme: There’s No Place Like Paramount Pictures for the Holidays
Adam: I’m going to do this double feature for real later in the year because I’m always looking for Christmas movies that I haven’t seen to watch on Christmas Eve. Are you a fan of Christmas in July or Remember the Night? I like that we’re doing Christmas in July (which is a thing some people/businesses/theaters do) but in June. That’s how the Cinemarink rolls.
Patrick: I already forgot we did a Christmas horror double when I programmed Christmas in July because I’m the worst, so hopefully we’re not overdoing the holiday fare this month. I like Christmas in July because I like most Preston Sturges, but I’ve never actually seen Remember the Night despite always wanting to. I really like the stars so I’m pretty sure I’ll dig it. Glad I’ll finally have an excuse to watch it.
Double Feature 9:Adam: #1: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Patrick: #2: The Black Gestapo (1975)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: There’s Something About Mary, The Dungeonmaster, Tales from the Crypt “Korman’s Kalamity”
Patrick: Theme: Featuring the Cast of Night Court
Patrick: Sometimes it’s hard to pair another movie with a masterpiece and you just push all your chips in on Night Court. I was originally going to program The Dungeonmaster second but then I thought better of it because The Black Gestapo (co-starring Charles Robinson, Mac from Night Court) has good ‘70s exploitation vibes just like TCM. It’s a surprisingly good movie. Plus I worked in some Crypt for my boy!
Adam: Thank you for the Crypt episode. Always a pleasure seeing one on the big screen at the Cinemarink. This is a fun theme. I used to love Night Court, especially Markie Post and the theme song. I like that you leaned into the grindhouse/exploitation vibes for this double feature.
Double Feature 10:
Patrick: #1: Tenet (2020)
Adam: #2: Birds of Prey (2020)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Bad Boys for Life, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dolittle, The Invisible Man, The Call of the Wild, Onward, The Croods: The New Age
Adam: Theme: Over $50M at the Domestic Box Office in 2020
Adam: I know the theme is super depressing and highlighting a time capsule no one wants to go back to BUT when I saw you booked Tenet (a movie I will always associate with seeing on the side of a brick building) my mind immediately went to Birds of Prey, and I know these are two movies you like a lot. Therefore, this night is dedicated with my good friend Patrick Bromley in mind. Of all the trailers, which movie is your favorite? I think mine’s Onward (which is underrated imho).
Patrick: Thanks for the Birds of Prey! This double is definitely for me. Thank you! Maybe it will help us reclaim 2020. As for the trailers? Oof. I haven’t seen a few of those and don’t love some of the ones I have seen (BBfL), so I guess I’ll say Invisible Man? It’s so tied to the pandemic in my mind, though, that I’ve never been able to revisit it. Same with Onward. What a weird time.
I realize I ended this column on a bummer, so let’s watch some Crypt and forget our troubles!

Friday Night Double Features Vol. 54 Jun 02, 2025
by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley
10 new double features to reward your exemplary report card.
Double Feature 1:
Adam: #1: Christmas Evil (1980)
Patrick: #2: Santa Claws (1996)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, “Treevenge,” All Through the House, Terrifier 3
Patrick: Theme: Trash Christmas
Patrick: I would never actually call Christmas Evil “trash” because it’s actually good, but it is sleazy and weird and has the best last shot of any movie ever. Santa Claws, on the other hand, is actual trash in that it sucks but also is trashy, full of nudity and poorly done violence courtesy of John Russo and Bill Hinzman of Night of the Living Dead fame. I’m programming it because I thought it would be fun to do a night of Christmas horror that’s not the obvious choices and because I’m hoping Debbie Rochon will show up. I’ve had a crush on that siren since the ‘90s.
Adam: I need you, Mike, and Adam Thas for this one. You’re my Pizza Hut “trash” crew. Christmas Evil is so damn good, and I trust you with Santa Claws, which I vaguely know of, I think, I could be wrong (checks…I was thinking of a different movie). The fact it’s from Bill Hinzman gets my hopes up because I once saw his movie FleshEater at the Music Box of Horrors and it’s really entertaining in a trashy way. I’ll hold a seat for Debbie Rochon for when she shows up.
Double Feature 2:
Patrick: #1: At Close Range (1986)
Adam: #2: Vision Quest (1985)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Desperately Seeking Susan, Who’s That Girl, A League of Their Own, “Live to Tell,” “Gambler” and “Crazy for You” music videos
Adam: Theme: Madonna Has a Great Song on the Soundtrack
Adam: At Close Range is great and I’d love to rewatch it soon as a tribute to the late director James Foley. I’m happy you programmed it. I went with Vision Quest for the second feature because I love that movie, and I wanted something dramatic but more upbeat to chase At Close Range which is capital SAD. “Live to Tell” and “Crazy for You” are two of my favorite Madonna songs, so having a night where we feature her music in films with trailers and music videos would be fun.
Patrick: I’m sad about James Foley. Until he started making 50 Shades movies, he was a very dependable filmmaker with a lot of movies I really like. At Close Range is one of his very best. I love the Madonna theme because both of these songs are great. “Live to Tell” might be my favorite Madonna, but I’m not sure if that’s because I like the movie it’s from so much or if it’s just that good of a song. “Crazy for You” is a close second. “I’ll Remember” might be third, proof that I only like Madonna songs from movies. But not “Die Another Day.” Never “Die Another Day.”
Double Feature 3:Adam: #1: Little Buddha (1993)
Patrick: #2: A Dirty Shame (2004)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: “Wicked Game” video, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, That Thing You Do!, Chris Isaak Show “Pilot”
Patrick: Theme: Starring Chris Isaak
Patrick: I’ve always liked Chris Isaak as a singer but he’s kind of a good actor, too. I think he started out getting bit parts in Jonathan Demme movies because they were friends but eventually worked his way up to supporting roles and even leads in stuff like Little Buddha, which remains one of my unseen Keanu movies. It seems a little like homework, so I slotted John Waters’ A Dirty Shame after it because it seems like the Chris Isaak movie that’s furthest away in terms of tone and content. I’m hoping Debbie Rochon shows up to this, too, not because she’s in either of the movies (she isn’t) but because I want there to always be an open seat for her at the Cinemarink.
Adam: She will. Don’t worry. Little Buddha brings in all the celebrities. It’s like a Knicks game. Chris Isaak is always good in movies. He’s like your Harry Connick, Jr. (for me)! They’re both naturals. I feel like Little Buddha is still playing at One Schaumburg Place. I don’t know why. I just remember very vividly that it played there. Watch, I’ll check and it was Rolling Meadows. I’m way behind on seeing John Waters movies so I’m glad I can check one off the list here.
Double Feature 4:
Patrick: #1: Any Given Sunday (1999)
Adam: #2: Wall Street (1987)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Platoon, Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July, Nixon, World Trade Center
Adam: Theme: Stone & McGinley
Adam: Even when I was in grade school, I liked John C. McGinley for some reason. Maybe because he’s like if Fozzie Bear were in an Oliver Stone movie. He just seemed like a goofy dude on screen most of the time. I still like him a lot now and it’s a good excuse to watch some Oliver Stone movies I love because Oliver Stone no longer gives me an excuse to watch Oliver Stone movies. Any Given Sunday and Wall Street are two of his most purely entertaining so this should sell out the Cinemarink I think. Rhyming is fun.
Patrick: As a former Scrubs guy, I’m a big John C. McGinley fan, too. He has an energy unlike any other actor. I get why Oliver Stone used him so much. Speaking of which, Oliver Stone had such a run in the ‘80s and ‘90s that it’s a shame he sucks so hard now. This would be an incredible night at the movies.
Double Feature 5:Adam: #1: Shall We Dance? (1996)
Patrick: #2: The Departed (2006)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Shall We Dance? (2004), Infernal Affairs (2002)
Patrick: Theme: Remake Swap
Patrick: I had a tough time here so I went with an easy theme. I’ve never seen the Japanese Shall We Dance? and I’ve never seen Infernal Affairs so at least I can see the trailer for the latter before The Departed, a movie for which I’m always in the mood. Martin Scorsese is kind of good.
Adam: I’m a huge fan of the Japanese Shall We Dance? so getting it on the Cinemarink screen makes me happy. It’s the type of movie I’d want to share with people since it’s such a crowd pleaser. So is The Departed, which is super commercial and easy to like. Honestly, I think this night would really go over well despite the movies being so different. Nice work, bud.
Double Feature 6:
Patrick: #1: Videodrome (1983)
Adam: #2: Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Network, Switching Channels, UHF
Adam: Theme: Television Stations
Adam: I went in a few different directions with the theme for this one but landed on TV stations because it’s a subgenre I enjoy unlike something like plane movies or hostage movies. I really need to rewatch Switching Channels. I remember loving that on cable as a kid. I didn’t book it second because it makes more sense to put two horror films together. Is Videodrome one of your favorite Cronenbergs? I need to revisit it but right now it’s in the second tier for me behind The Fly (1986), A History of Violence, and The Dead Zone.
Patrick: I would never make the case that Videodrome is Cronenberg’s best movie (that’s probably The Fly), but it might be my favorite. Pairing it with Dawn of the Dead means we’re doubling two of the best horror movies ever made, so this night is bulletproof.
Double Feature 7:Adam: #1: Stand By Me (1986)
Patrick: #2: Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: The Shawshank Redemption, Hearts in Atlantis, The Running Man (1986)
Patrick: Theme: Non-Horror Stephen King
Patrick: Stephen King remains my favorite author – he has been for my whole life – and I love the movies based on his work, even the bad ones. Sometimes especially the bad ones. It will be cool to devote a night to his non-horror offerings. Stand By Me is basically a perfect movie and Dolores Claiborne is super underrated, so hopefully we can make some fans of the second when they come in to see the first.
Adam: This will be a great warm-up for The Life of Chuck, which is one of my most anticipated movies of the summer. I love all Stephen King film adaptations, but especially have a soft spot for his non-horror. This is a really good pairing. They both have a leisurely pace that will go well together.
Double Feature 8:
Patrick: #1: Christmas in July (1940)
Adam: #2: Remember the Night (1940)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: All I Want for Christmas, Scrooged, White Christmas
Adam: Theme: There’s No Place Like Paramount Pictures for the Holidays
Adam: I’m going to do this double feature for real later in the year because I’m always looking for Christmas movies that I haven’t seen to watch on Christmas Eve. Are you a fan of Christmas in July or Remember the Night? I like that we’re doing Christmas in July (which is a thing some people/businesses/theaters do) but in June. That’s how the Cinemarink rolls.
Patrick: I already forgot we did a Christmas horror double when I programmed Christmas in July because I’m the worst, so hopefully we’re not overdoing the holiday fare this month. I like Christmas in July because I like most Preston Sturges, but I’ve never actually seen Remember the Night despite always wanting to. I really like the stars so I’m pretty sure I’ll dig it. Glad I’ll finally have an excuse to watch it.
Double Feature 9:Adam: #1: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Patrick: #2: The Black Gestapo (1975)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: There’s Something About Mary, The Dungeonmaster, Tales from the Crypt “Korman’s Kalamity”
Patrick: Theme: Featuring the Cast of Night Court
Patrick: Sometimes it’s hard to pair another movie with a masterpiece and you just push all your chips in on Night Court. I was originally going to program The Dungeonmaster second but then I thought better of it because The Black Gestapo (co-starring Charles Robinson, Mac from Night Court) has good ‘70s exploitation vibes just like TCM. It’s a surprisingly good movie. Plus I worked in some Crypt for my boy!
Adam: Thank you for the Crypt episode. Always a pleasure seeing one on the big screen at the Cinemarink. This is a fun theme. I used to love Night Court, especially Markie Post and the theme song. I like that you leaned into the grindhouse/exploitation vibes for this double feature.
Double Feature 10:
Patrick: #1: Tenet (2020)
Adam: #2: Birds of Prey (2020)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Bad Boys for Life, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dolittle, The Invisible Man, The Call of the Wild, Onward, The Croods: The New Age
Adam: Theme: Over $50M at the Domestic Box Office in 2020
Adam: I know the theme is super depressing and highlighting a time capsule no one wants to go back to BUT when I saw you booked Tenet (a movie I will always associate with seeing on the side of a brick building) my mind immediately went to Birds of Prey, and I know these are two movies you like a lot. Therefore, this night is dedicated with my good friend Patrick Bromley in mind. Of all the trailers, which movie is your favorite? I think mine’s Onward (which is underrated imho).
Patrick: Thanks for the Birds of Prey! This double is definitely for me. Thank you! Maybe it will help us reclaim 2020. As for the trailers? Oof. I haven’t seen a few of those and don’t love some of the ones I have seen (BBfL), so I guess I’ll say Invisible Man? It’s so tied to the pandemic in my mind, though, that I’ve never been able to revisit it. Same with Onward. What a weird time.
I realize I ended this column on a bummer, so let’s watch some Crypt and forget our troubles!

Junesploitation 2025 Day 2: Zombies! Jun 02, 2025

Junesploitation 2025 Day 1: Italian Crime! Jun 01, 2025

Weekend Open Thread May 31, 2025

Your 2025 Junesploitation Primer May 30, 2025
by Patrick BromleyThings get crazy this weekend.
This June 1 will mark the 12th year we've run Junesploitation, and it has become an essential part of our annual calendar at F This Movie!. What started as an excuse to watch some trashy movies has expanded into a full-blown month-long party, and it's all because of your enthusiasm and participation. You all are the best.Several of you have already made your Junesploitation viewing lists and even published them in some cases, which is awesome. The level of excitement we see online for this goofy made-up holiday is genuinely amazing and makes the whole thing so much more fun. If you aren't yet sure what you want to watch -- or you aren't sure what certain categories mean -- this primer should hopefully help you explore the weird and wonderful world of exploitation movies.
As mentioned in the original Junesploitation announcement, there are a ton of streaming services from which to choose titles: Shudder, Full Moon Streaming, Night Flight, Shout! Factory TV, as well as the usual Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Tubi, a true GOLD MINE with hundreds of kung fu, horror, and exploitation films available in their library (and it's FREE). Also check out Shaw Brothers Universe, which is a great resource to tell you where hundreds of amazing kung fu films are available to stream. The Grindhouse Cinema Database offers hundreds of titles broken up by genre, so that one's good if you're ever feeling stuck on a certain category.As is our Junesploitation tradition, we're providing a collection of links (below) that will take you to some recommendations of titles from each day's category. If you're new to Junesploitation, please know that you do not need to watch a movie off of any of these lists (except for the ones with a finite number of titles like David Carradine or Lucio Fulci or Wings Hauser). These are just here to give you some ideas, but you're free to pick any movie you want that you feel fits into a given category. Remember, the whole point is it have an awesome time and watch a lot of movies, so be sure to make it fun for yourself and watch what you want to watch.
Here's this year's primer!
June 1 – Italian Crime!June 2 – Zombies!June 3 – David Carradine!June 4 – Blaxploitation!June 5 – Magic!June 6 – Giallo!June 7 – Kung Fu!June 8 – Heists!June 9 – Free Space!June 10 – Jess Franco!June 11 – ‘90s Action!June 12 – Cartoons!June 13 – Friday the 13th!June 14 – Free Space!June 15 – Revenge!June 16 – ‘80s Comedy!June 17 – Fulci!June 18 – Rock and Roll!June 19 – Free Space!June 20 – Exploitation Auteurs!June 21 – Westerns!June 22 – Teenagers!June 23 – New World Pictures!June 24 – Hong Kong Action!June 25 – Wings Hauser Tribute!June 26 – Eurosploitation! (Any European exploitation/sleaze)June 27 – Free Space!June 28 – Cannon!June 29 – ‘80s Action!June 30 – Italian Horror!

Your 2025 Junesploitation Primer May 30, 2025
by Patrick BromleyThings get crazy this weekend.
This June 1 will mark the 12th year we've run Junesploitation, and it has become an essential part of our annual calendar at F This Movie!. What started as an excuse to watch some trashy movies has expanded into a full-blown month-long party, and it's all because of your enthusiasm and participation. You all are the best.Several of you have already made your Junesploitation viewing lists and even published them in some cases, which is awesome. The level of excitement we see online for this goofy made-up holiday is genuinely amazing and makes the whole thing so much more fun. If you aren't yet sure what you want to watch -- or you aren't sure what certain categories mean -- this primer should hopefully help you explore the weird and wonderful world of exploitation movies.
As mentioned in the original Junesploitation announcement, there are a ton of streaming services from which to choose titles: Shudder, Full Moon Streaming, Night Flight, Shout! Factory TV, as well as the usual Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Tubi, a true GOLD MINE with hundreds of kung fu, horror, and exploitation films available in their library (and it's FREE). Also check out Shaw Brothers Universe, which is a great resource to tell you where hundreds of amazing kung fu films are available to stream. The Grindhouse Cinema Database offers hundreds of titles broken up by genre, so that one's good if you're ever feeling stuck on a certain category.As is our Junesploitation tradition, we're providing a collection of links (below) that will take you to some recommendations of titles from each day's category. If you're new to Junesploitation, please know that you do not need to watch a movie off of any of these lists (except for the ones with a finite number of titles like David Carradine or Lucio Fulci or Wings Hauser). These are just here to give you some ideas, but you're free to pick any movie you want that you feel fits into a given category. Remember, the whole point is it have an awesome time and watch a lot of movies, so be sure to make it fun for yourself and watch what you want to watch.
Here's this year's primer!
June 1 – Italian Crime!June 2 – Zombies!June 3 – David Carradine!June 4 – Blaxploitation!June 5 – Magic!June 6 – Giallo!June 7 – Kung Fu!June 8 – Heists!June 9 – Free Space!June 10 – Jess Franco!June 11 – ‘90s Action!June 12 – Cartoons!June 13 – Friday the 13th!June 14 – Free Space!June 15 – Revenge!June 16 – ‘80s Comedy!June 17 – Fulci!June 18 – Rock and Roll!June 19 – Free Space!June 20 – Exploitation Auteurs!June 21 – Westerns!June 22 – Teenagers!June 23 – New World Pictures!June 24 – Hong Kong Action!June 25 – Wings Hauser Tribute!June 26 – Eurosploitation! (Any European exploitation/sleaze)June 27 – Free Space!June 28 – Cannon!June 29 – ‘80s Action!June 30 – Italian Horror!

Review: BRING HER BACK May 29, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Growing pains.
YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou follow up their 2022 feature debut Talk To Me with Bring Her Back, a gruesome thriller that — stop me if you’ve heard this before — doubles as a gut-wrenching examination of grief and trauma. Yup. Grief and trauma. Again. We can’t blame the young directors for making art in the mode of their generation, of course, but with overeager horror influencers crowning every new release a masterpiece and every promising filmmaker an auteur, it does become necessary to occasionally stop and ask ourselves what virtue there could possibly be in this kind of exhaustive repetition. Bring Her Back is a well-crafted visual exercise with some chilling effects, for sure, but by drawing yet again from such a familiar thematic well, the Philippou brothers — known collectively online as RackaRacka — put more pressure on themselves to bring real narrative innovation to their sophomore effort. That Bring Her Back also fails in that regard makes it that much harder to excuse its reliance on these same old ideas.Left without a home after the sudden death of their father, teenage step-siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) are placed in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former counselor whose own experience with loss should make them a fine match. Laura’s daughter died in a household accident — like Piper, she was partially-sighted — a tragedy she’s been coping with through what we’ll politely call “belligerent exuberance”: She’s pushy, in other words. She’s presumptuous. Loud. Nosy. She considers Andy’s privacy negotiable, and she seems committed to reshaping Piper in her late daughter’s image. The kids are understandably put off at first, but since they only plan to stay until Andy gains legal guardianship of his sister anyway, they figure it’s worth enduring Laura and her other foster child, a mute boy named Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips). She’s just lonely, after all, and there’s probably no reason to worry about the fact that she feeds Ollie human hair, pours urine on Andy while he sleeps, and stays up late watching Wiccan torture porn on VHS.
Or maybe there is. Maybe Laura’s obsession with bringing her daughter back from the dead has knocked loose whatever screws were still holding on after such an unimaginable loss, and maybe the idea of storing her child’s soul in the body of another until she can perfect the ritual that will let her live again doesn’t seem all that extreme if it means putting an end to such crippling desolation. Bring Her Back doesn’t bury the lede as far as Laura’s insanity goes, nor does Sally Hawkins’ manic performance leave any ambiguity about where that insanity will ultimately take her. That’s good news for Hawkins, who’s the clear highlight of a film that has little interest in answering questions about what Laura is doing — the directors compare their screenplay to The Shining in A24’s press notes, which explains their talent for writing impertinent characters — or developing a meaningful connection to Piper’s partial blindness or Andy’s visions of his father (Stephen Phillip). As in Talk to Me, the Philippous are simply throwing shocking images together and seeing what sticks.Those images are pretty damn shocking, in fairness, which will go a long way toward boosting Bring Her Back’s opening weekend grosses and keeping the thirty-second clips in heavy rotation on TikTok. Jonah Wren Phillips should be commended for enduring what must have been hours of prosthetic work to transform Ollie from a merely-malnourished eight-year-old into a pregnant rage demon that feeds on barnyard animals. Again, Ollie’s purpose in Laura’s scheme is pretty murky, but watching the little guy gnaw through a butcher’s knife — and lose a few teeth in the process — is so outrageous that it’s hard to imagine too many audience members getting distracted by logistical questions. If nothing else, the Philippous know how to stage these goopier moments for maximum impact, with cinematographer Aaron McLiskey working in a few short-focus motifs that might have complimented Piper’s partial-sightedness had the film been interested in using that ailment as anything other than a way to stitch together a few plot contrivances.So while Bring Her Back has a few meme-worthy moments on par with the bear suit from Midsommar and the telephone pole from Hereditary, it sorely lacks the substance of those movies, the connections between images and ideas that make the best genre films so eminently rewatchable. Ambiguity is not interchangeable with complexity, nor is “because trauma” a sufficient stand-in for a second screenplay draft. The Philippou brothers may well become great filmmakers in the future, but this sophomore effort exposes their limited understanding of what actually makes a horror movie scary. But you know what? It’s hard! Not everyone can do it! Not every filmmaker is John Carpenter, quick though modern journalists may be to anoint them so. It’s supposed to be difficult, and if the Philippous can get away from regurgitating the same A24-approved “elevated” conceits and come up with something coherent and captivating, then there’s no reason to believe that the stylish craft that serves them so well in Bring Her Back will help them make a good movie one day.
Bring Her Back hits U.S. theaters on Friday, May 30th.

Review: BRING HER BACK May 29, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
Growing pains.
YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou follow up their 2022 feature debut Talk To Me with Bring Her Back, a gruesome thriller that — stop me if you’ve heard this before — doubles as a gut-wrenching examination of grief and trauma. Yup. Grief and trauma. Again. We can’t blame the young directors for making art in the mode of their generation, of course, but with overeager horror influencers crowning every new release a masterpiece and every promising filmmaker an auteur, it does become necessary to occasionally stop and ask ourselves what virtue there could possibly be in this kind of exhaustive repetition. Bring Her Back is a well-crafted visual exercise with some chilling effects, for sure, but by drawing yet again from such a familiar thematic well, the Philippou brothers — known collectively online as RackaRacka — put more pressure on themselves to bring real narrative innovation to their sophomore effort. That Bring Her Back also fails in that regard makes it that much harder to excuse its reliance on these same old ideas.Left without a home after the sudden death of their father, teenage step-siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) are placed in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former counselor whose own experience with loss should make them a fine match. Laura’s daughter died in a household accident — like Piper, she was partially-sighted — a tragedy she’s been coping with through what we’ll politely call “belligerent exuberance”: She’s pushy, in other words. She’s presumptuous. Loud. Nosy. She considers Andy’s privacy negotiable, and she seems committed to reshaping Piper in her late daughter’s image. The kids are understandably put off at first, but since they only plan to stay until Andy gains legal guardianship of his sister anyway, they figure it’s worth enduring Laura and her other foster child, a mute boy named Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips). She’s just lonely, after all, and there’s probably no reason to worry about the fact that she feeds Ollie human hair, pours urine on Andy while he sleeps, and stays up late watching Wiccan torture porn on VHS.
Or maybe there is. Maybe Laura’s obsession with bringing her daughter back from the dead has knocked loose whatever screws were still holding on after such an unimaginable loss, and maybe the idea of storing her child’s soul in the body of another until she can perfect the ritual that will let her live again doesn’t seem all that extreme if it means putting an end to such crippling desolation. Bring Her Back doesn’t bury the lede as far as Laura’s insanity goes, nor does Sally Hawkins’ manic performance leave any ambiguity about where that insanity will ultimately take her. That’s good news for Hawkins, who’s the clear highlight of a film that has little interest in answering questions about what Laura is doing — the directors compare their screenplay to The Shining in A24’s press notes, which explains their talent for writing impertinent characters — or developing a meaningful connection to Piper’s partial blindness or Andy’s visions of his father (Stephen Phillip). As in Talk to Me, the Philippous are simply throwing shocking images together and seeing what sticks.Those images are pretty damn shocking, in fairness, which will go a long way toward boosting Bring Her Back’s opening weekend grosses and keeping the thirty-second clips in heavy rotation on TikTok. Jonah Wren Phillips should be commended for enduring what must have been hours of prosthetic work to transform Ollie from a merely-malnourished eight-year-old into a pregnant rage demon that feeds on barnyard animals. Again, Ollie’s purpose in Laura’s scheme is pretty murky, but watching the little guy gnaw through a butcher’s knife — and lose a few teeth in the process — is so outrageous that it’s hard to imagine too many audience members getting distracted by logistical questions. If nothing else, the Philippous know how to stage these goopier moments for maximum impact, with cinematographer Aaron McLiskey working in a few short-focus motifs that might have complimented Piper’s partial-sightedness had the film been interested in using that ailment as anything other than a way to stitch together a few plot contrivances.So while Bring Her Back has a few meme-worthy moments on par with the bear suit from Midsommar and the telephone pole from Hereditary, it sorely lacks the substance of those movies, the connections between images and ideas that make the best genre films so eminently rewatchable. Ambiguity is not interchangeable with complexity, nor is “because trauma” a sufficient stand-in for a second screenplay draft. The Philippou brothers may well become great filmmakers in the future, but this sophomore effort exposes their limited understanding of what actually makes a horror movie scary. But you know what? It’s hard! Not everyone can do it! Not every filmmaker is John Carpenter, quick though modern journalists may be to anoint them so. It’s supposed to be difficult, and if the Philippous can get away from regurgitating the same A24-approved “elevated” conceits and come up with something coherent and captivating, then there’s no reason to believe that the stylish craft that serves them so well in Bring Her Back will help them make a good movie one day.
Bring Her Back hits U.S. theaters on Friday, May 30th.

Reserved Seating: Same Title Showdown - THE HUNTED May 29, 2025
The review duo (with special guest Leo Brady!) who decide which is better: The Hunted (1995) or The Hunted (2003).

12 Movies I Plan to Watch During Junesploitation for the First Time(ish) May 28, 2025
by Adam Riske
Finally going to pull these off my shelf and give them a look.
Saturday, June 7th – Kung Fu! Fist of Legend (1994): I remember back in my Blockbuster Video days that we had a shelf full of copies of Fist of Legend to rent because Romeo Must Die was being released in theaters. I picked up a copy used but have never watched it despite several friends telling me how good it is. I recently watched the trailer, and it looks amazing. This is just what I need to keep my Jet Li run going after a recent revisit of Romeo Must Die for the Oops All Snaps episode.
Monday, June 9th – Free Space! Gunmen (1993)How have I not seen this? As a burgeoning Christopher Lambert guy, I must. Apparently, he’s eating bugs in this! Plus, the rest of the cast is gold (Mario Van Peebles, who will always be my Solo; Denis Leary, who will always be my Coach Penn; Kadeem Hardison, who will always be my Dwayne Wayne). If that wasn’t enough, there’s Patrick Stewart, rappers as mercenaries and what the DVD case promises as“sardonic adventure.”
Wednesday, June 11th – ‘90s Action! Sniper (1993)I’ve always meant to see this but never have. I’m glad I waited because Tom Berenger is an actor I enjoy more as an adult than when I was a Platoon-fearing adolescent. Plus, it’s got my guy and Tales from the Crypt legend Billy Zane co-starring. I can’t believe how many sequels this thing had. It looks like it’s up to ten. Take that, Jurassic Park.Thursday, June 12th – Cartoons! Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992)I never got around to seeing this one as a kid because I was slightly too old to see it in theaters back in 1992. Now that I’m in my 40s, I guess that’s not a problem anymore. Life is weird. Anyways, I think what drew me in to Ferngully the most was the Pizza Hut promotion I’d see advertised on TV. You could get a Kids Pizza Pack with a personal pizza, a Ferngully cup, and a terrarium! If that weren’t enough, I’m going to be treated to the vocal talents of Samantha Mathis, Tim Curry, Christian Slater (Kuffs!), and Robin Williams. Sold! And yes, I’m ordering Pizza Hut that day.
Saturday, June 14th – Free Space! An Innocent Man (1989)I must have really liked Three Men and a Baby as a kid because I remember how much I wanted to see An Innocent Man in second grade. I think Touchstone/Hollywood Pictures marketing just appeals to children because we know deep down, they’re Disney heroes. Selleck plays a character named Jimmy Rainwood in this. Just like Aladdin and Simba, you can see him occasionally doing character meet & greets at Chef Mickey’s.
Sunday, June 15th – Revenge! The Substitute (1996)I remember seeing this at some point on video in the ‘90s but those memories are lost in time…like tears in the rain. Anyways, more Berenger! Plus, I’ve wanted to revisit this for months since Quentin Tarantino discussed it at length with Roger Avary on the Video Archives podcast.
Monday, June 16th – ‘80s Comedy! The Golden Child (1986)I’ve been trying to catch up on early ‘80s Eddie Murphy movies and this is the big one I have left. I’ve heard mixed things over the years, but I hope I like it with my expectations low. It seems like a mix of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Big Trouble in Little China so it should be at least a little bit fun, right?Thursday, June 19th – Free Space! The Mod Squad (1999)Another one where my memories are lost in time…like tears in the rain. I’ve always liked Omar Epps and I’ve grown to become a defender/fan of Giovanni Ribisi (35mm! Horizon’s Thanos! Seth Davis from Boiler Room!) so sure why not also Claire Danes? The sole DVD special feature is an “Exciting Booklet Containing Cool Insider Info,” so I’ll report back. I just rewatched the trailer and man is it 1999 to its bones. I feel like I should double feature this with Go.
Saturday, June 21st – Westerns! Silverado (1985)Again, memories lost in time…like tears in the rain. I like Westerns and this one’s beloved, so I owe it a second viewing, especially since it has a breakout Kevin Costner performance. My favorite thing about Silverado is that I remember cast member Amanda Wyss told me at Flashback Weekend that the cast loved working with each other so much that they shared a Silverado text chain, and this was in the 2010s!
Tuesday, June 24th – Hong Kong Action! The Heroic Trio (1993)I saw a few minutes of this movie late night on cable as a teen and it’s stuck with me ever since. My mind was blown but I, for some reason, never sat down and watched the whole thing. That all changes this June! The cast is great. It has a wizard villain. And the trailer has so many flippy jumps, lightning, and skeletons. I need this.
Friday, June 27th – Free Space! Red Heat (1988)This is one of my unseen Arnold and Walter Hill movies so I’m looking forward to crossing it off the list. Plus, this is the first of two movies I’ll check out for Junesploitation set in Chicago. I’m surprised both Jim Belushi and Ed O’ Ross are in this. I didn’t know they could exist at the same time and space. They’re like if Two-Face split and became two men. Also, it doesn’t feel like Junesploitation until I’ve watched a movie from Carolco.Saturday, June 29th – ‘80s Action! Code of Silence (1985)Here’s the other Chicago movie. I’m not real familiar with Chuck Norris cinema (I’ve only seen Invasion USA, Sidekicks, and Expendables 2), so checking out what many consider his best movie (directed by my guy Andrew Davis) seems like the way to go. Plus, Norris jumps off the top of an El Train in the trailer and everyone in Chicago has done that six times.
What are you planning to watch for the first time(ish) this Junesploitation?

12 Movies I Plan to Watch During Junesploitation for the First Time(ish) May 28, 2025
by Adam Riske
Finally going to pull these off my shelf and give them a look.
Saturday, June 7th – Kung Fu! Fist of Legend (1994): I remember back in my Blockbuster Video days that we had a shelf full of copies of Fist of Legend to rent because Romeo Must Die was being released in theaters. I picked up a copy used but have never watched it despite several friends telling me how good it is. I recently watched the trailer, and it looks amazing. This is just what I need to keep my Jet Li run going after a recent revisit of Romeo Must Die for the Oops All Snaps episode.
Monday, June 9th – Free Space! Gunmen (1993)How have I not seen this? As a burgeoning Christopher Lambert guy, I must. Apparently, he’s eating bugs in this! Plus, the rest of the cast is gold (Mario Van Peebles, who will always be my Solo; Denis Leary, who will always be my Coach Penn; Kadeem Hardison, who will always be my Dwayne Wayne). If that wasn’t enough, there’s Patrick Stewart, rappers as mercenaries and what the DVD case promises as“sardonic adventure.”
Wednesday, June 11th – ‘90s Action! Sniper (1993)I’ve always meant to see this but never have. I’m glad I waited because Tom Berenger is an actor I enjoy more as an adult than when I was a Platoon-fearing adolescent. Plus, it’s got my guy and Tales from the Crypt legend Billy Zane co-starring. I can’t believe how many sequels this thing had. It looks like it’s up to ten. Take that, Jurassic Park.Thursday, June 12th – Cartoons! Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992)I never got around to seeing this one as a kid because I was slightly too old to see it in theaters back in 1992. Now that I’m in my 40s, I guess that’s not a problem anymore. Life is weird. Anyways, I think what drew me in to Ferngully the most was the Pizza Hut promotion I’d see advertised on TV. You could get a Kids Pizza Pack with a personal pizza, a Ferngully cup, and a terrarium! If that weren’t enough, I’m going to be treated to the vocal talents of Samantha Mathis, Tim Curry, Christian Slater (Kuffs!), and Robin Williams. Sold! And yes, I’m ordering Pizza Hut that day.
Saturday, June 14th – Free Space! An Innocent Man (1989)I must have really liked Three Men and a Baby as a kid because I remember how much I wanted to see An Innocent Man in second grade. I think Touchstone/Hollywood Pictures marketing just appeals to children because we know deep down, they’re Disney heroes. Selleck plays a character named Jimmy Rainwood in this. Just like Aladdin and Simba, you can see him occasionally doing character meet & greets at Chef Mickey’s.
Sunday, June 15th – Revenge! The Substitute (1996)I remember seeing this at some point on video in the ‘90s but those memories are lost in time…like tears in the rain. Anyways, more Berenger! Plus, I’ve wanted to revisit this for months since Quentin Tarantino discussed it at length with Roger Avary on the Video Archives podcast.
Monday, June 16th – ‘80s Comedy! The Golden Child (1986)I’ve been trying to catch up on early ‘80s Eddie Murphy movies and this is the big one I have left. I’ve heard mixed things over the years, but I hope I like it with my expectations low. It seems like a mix of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Big Trouble in Little China so it should be at least a little bit fun, right?Thursday, June 19th – Free Space! The Mod Squad (1999)Another one where my memories are lost in time…like tears in the rain. I’ve always liked Omar Epps and I’ve grown to become a defender/fan of Giovanni Ribisi (35mm! Horizon’s Thanos! Seth Davis from Boiler Room!) so sure why not also Claire Danes? The sole DVD special feature is an “Exciting Booklet Containing Cool Insider Info,” so I’ll report back. I just rewatched the trailer and man is it 1999 to its bones. I feel like I should double feature this with Go.
Saturday, June 21st – Westerns! Silverado (1985)Again, memories lost in time…like tears in the rain. I like Westerns and this one’s beloved, so I owe it a second viewing, especially since it has a breakout Kevin Costner performance. My favorite thing about Silverado is that I remember cast member Amanda Wyss told me at Flashback Weekend that the cast loved working with each other so much that they shared a Silverado text chain, and this was in the 2010s!
Tuesday, June 24th – Hong Kong Action! The Heroic Trio (1993)I saw a few minutes of this movie late night on cable as a teen and it’s stuck with me ever since. My mind was blown but I, for some reason, never sat down and watched the whole thing. That all changes this June! The cast is great. It has a wizard villain. And the trailer has so many flippy jumps, lightning, and skeletons. I need this.
Friday, June 27th – Free Space! Red Heat (1988)This is one of my unseen Arnold and Walter Hill movies so I’m looking forward to crossing it off the list. Plus, this is the first of two movies I’ll check out for Junesploitation set in Chicago. I’m surprised both Jim Belushi and Ed O’ Ross are in this. I didn’t know they could exist at the same time and space. They’re like if Two-Face split and became two men. Also, it doesn’t feel like Junesploitation until I’ve watched a movie from Carolco.Saturday, June 29th – ‘80s Action! Code of Silence (1985)Here’s the other Chicago movie. I’m not real familiar with Chuck Norris cinema (I’ve only seen Invasion USA, Sidekicks, and Expendables 2), so checking out what many consider his best movie (directed by my guy Andrew Davis) seems like the way to go. Plus, Norris jumps off the top of an El Train in the trailer and everyone in Chicago has done that six times.
What are you planning to watch for the first time(ish) this Junesploitation?

FTM 773: WES ANDERSON DOUBLE FEATURE May 28, 2025
Patrick and Rob celebrate the release of Wes Anderson's newest movie by talking about two of their underrated favorites, The Darjeeling Limited and The French Dispatch.
Download this episode here.
Subscribe to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.
Also discussed this episode: Mountainhead (2025), The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023), Black Bag (2025), Mickey 17 (2025), The Age of Innocence (1993), They Call Her Death (2024),

Johnny Showtime: THE WIZ May 27, 2025
by JB
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Wiz opening on Broadway, Fathom Events screened the perhaps beloved film nationwide on May 18 and 21.
This week I eased on down a local road to revisit The Wiz after many years. I still remember first seeing the film at the late, lamented Des Plaines theater a week into its original release. I was 16 years old. I was the only one in the theater.
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: The Wiz is based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, filtered through the Black American experience.This time around, I found the movie to be very much a mixed bag. Half of it is amazing, right up there with the best Hollywood musicals ever made. The other half is botched—done in by fevered egos, artistic hubris, and the mistaken belief that MORE is always better.
THE AMAZING: Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man, Ted Ross as the Cowardly Lion, and Mabel King as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, all acquit themselves nicely. These are strong performances. I especially like Russell’s version of “Slide a Little Oil,” Ted Ross’s take on “Mean Old Lion,” and King’s epic, “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” These songs are delightful.
MORE AMAZING: Michael Jackson’s performance is terrific. This was his film debut. The filmmakers were wise to use a song that was discarded after the Broadway show’s Baltimore try-out, “You Can’t Win.” It’s a perfect song for Jackson, and he turns it into a singing tour-de-force. One has to admire his performance in this film; he dances up a storm. Because he is the first to meet up with Dorothy, and because Jackson and Diana Ross were such good friends in real life, the choreography favors them dancing together. During the climactic “Can You Feel a Brand-New Day” showstopper, Ross and Jackson are always front and center, dancing and emoting. In fact, a fun game any otherwise bored viewer can play during this particular musical number is “Find Nipsey Russell.”
HINT: He’s usually way on the far-right side of the frame, hidden behind dozens of other dancers.SAD TANGENT: I tread lightly here because you can’t talk about Michael Jackson without dredging up his unsavory and perhaps criminal personal life. I always thought of Jackson as a victim, though; his early show business experiences and his treatment by his tyrannical father call to mind John Lennon’s take on fame, describing Elvis as the King of Rock and Roll being tied to his throne by the very people who were dependent on his success for their livelihood. The same thing happened to Jackson. He became the biggest star on Earth but the price he paid was dear: he gave up his privacy, his nose, his central nervous system. Imagine needing to inject the surgical anesthesia propofol in order to simply sleep at night.
STILL MORE AMAZING: The production design, which turns real New York locations into Oz, is breathtaking. (This is the only film in history that features an end credit shout-out: “Yellow Brick Road provided by Congoleum.”) Stan Winston’s special make-up designs are some of his career-best, especially the prosthetic make-ups on The Tin Man, the Flying Monkeys, and the Crows. Quincy Jones’ arrangements of the show’s original songs are also quite good.
THE BOTCHED: Diana Ross is miscast as Dorothy. She tries her damnedest, but she’s too old for the part. Ross comes across as an overly serious, pinch-faced scold, and is saddled with nothing but second-rate ballads. The entire enterprise is placed on her shoulders and, though we can see her straining to hold the whole thing together, she’s just not up to the task.Ross is not helped by the script, penned by a young Joel Schumacher. It gleefully tosses out every line of dialogue from the Broadway smash and replaces it with what can only be described as self-improvement platitudes straight from the work of Werner Erhard and the then-popular “EST” movement. Apparently, both Diana Ross and Joel Schumacher were acolytes of the self-help guru and were pleased that their film could reflect his important work. Apparently, Lena Horne’s platitude-heavy final speech is a patchwork quilt of Erhard-isms with just enough articles and conjunctions added to make them complete sentences.
REALLY BOTCHED: What really had me shaking my head at my most recent screening was the songs themselves and their placement in the narrative. In its film version, most of The Wiz’s narrative momentum is lost by bad song choices, lack of editing, and redundancy. Quincy Jones and the film’s producers chucked eleven—ELEVEN—of the Broadway show’s original songs and added new ones. This leads to a frustrating doubling of the show’s themes. Theresa Merritt sings “The Feeling That We Had” at Thanksgiving dinner, and it’s beautiful. Then, Diana Ross immediately sings another ballad, “Can I Go On?” (a new song by Quincy Jones, Nickolas Ashford, and Valerie Simpson) and it's simply more of the same.
Nipsey Russell sings “What Would I Do If I Could Feel,” expressing his plight without a heart, then immediately sings “Slide Some Oil to Me,” expressing his plight being rusted shut. I have never seen a Hollywood musical where more characters sing TWO SONGS IN A ROW. Once the producers decided to change the order of the songs, they could have paced things in a way that provided more variety and narrative oomph. In an example of double climax, the clueless filmmakers follow Broadway showstopper “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News” minutes later, with ANOTHER SHOWSTOPPER, “A Brand-New Day,” written for the film by Luther Vandross. This is too much of a good thing.ANOTHER WASTE OF THE AUDIENCE’S TIME is the “Emerald City Sequence” and musical number. When our plucky band of Yellow Brick Road travelers finally arrive at their destination, we are treated to an interminable fashion show wherein hundreds of fashion models strut around the central plaza of the World Trade Center, wearing clothes of a single color, only to have the eponymous Wiz announce every 90 seconds that said color has been changed. What this Met Gala Eye Candy has to do with the plot is anyone’s guess. Oz is a fickle, fashion-crazy town? Perhaps. The green clothes look the best? Well, yes. Real designers like Halston, Ralph Lauren, and Oscar de la Renta supplied the film company with real haute couture fashions? Probably that last one.
BATTLE OF THE SINGING STARS: Four years ago, writing about 1976 snooze-fest A Star is Born, I discussed the film’s "climactic", SEVEN-MINUTE-LONG, UNBROKEN CLOSE-UP OF STAR BARBRA STREISAND. I wrote, “I’m at a loss to name any other Hollywood film that contains an instance of massive ego that even comes close to this.” Well, folks, I’m no longer at a loss. The Wiz has a shot that is the only serious rival to Streisand’s Uber Hubris. Reprising the song “Home,” director Sidney Lumet frames star Diana Ross in an unbroken close-up that goes on for four excruciating minutes. At least in A Star is Born, Babs is singing to an unseen, offscreen audience. In The Wiz, Diana Ross is SINGING RIGHT TO US. We are locked into her unwavering, unrelenting stare.CRYING INTO YOUR BEER: If you are sad because you missed the Fathom Event screening, you are in luck, gentle reader. The esteemed Criterion Collection is poised to release its new 4K Blu-ray disc of The Wiz in just two weeks’ time—June 10—with oodles of extras. Preorder it now... and prepare to ease on down the road!

Johnny Showtime: THE WIZ May 27, 2025
by JB
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Wiz opening on Broadway, Fathom Events screened the perhaps beloved film nationwide on May 18 and 21.
This week I eased on down a local road to revisit The Wiz after many years. I still remember first seeing the film at the late, lamented Des Plaines theater a week into its original release. I was 16 years old. I was the only one in the theater.
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: The Wiz is based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, filtered through the Black American experience.This time around, I found the movie to be very much a mixed bag. Half of it is amazing, right up there with the best Hollywood musicals ever made. The other half is botched—done in by fevered egos, artistic hubris, and the mistaken belief that MORE is always better.
THE AMAZING: Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man, Ted Ross as the Cowardly Lion, and Mabel King as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, all acquit themselves nicely. These are strong performances. I especially like Russell’s version of “Slide a Little Oil,” Ted Ross’s take on “Mean Old Lion,” and King’s epic, “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” These songs are delightful.
MORE AMAZING: Michael Jackson’s performance is terrific. This was his film debut. The filmmakers were wise to use a song that was discarded after the Broadway show’s Baltimore try-out, “You Can’t Win.” It’s a perfect song for Jackson, and he turns it into a singing tour-de-force. One has to admire his performance in this film; he dances up a storm. Because he is the first to meet up with Dorothy, and because Jackson and Diana Ross were such good friends in real life, the choreography favors them dancing together. During the climactic “Can You Feel a Brand-New Day” showstopper, Ross and Jackson are always front and center, dancing and emoting. In fact, a fun game any otherwise bored viewer can play during this particular musical number is “Find Nipsey Russell.”
HINT: He’s usually way on the far-right side of the frame, hidden behind dozens of other dancers.SAD TANGENT: I tread lightly here because you can’t talk about Michael Jackson without dredging up his unsavory and perhaps criminal personal life. I always thought of Jackson as a victim, though; his early show business experiences and his treatment by his tyrannical father call to mind John Lennon’s take on fame, describing Elvis as the King of Rock and Roll being tied to his throne by the very people who were dependent on his success for their livelihood. The same thing happened to Jackson. He became the biggest star on Earth but the price he paid was dear: he gave up his privacy, his nose, his central nervous system. Imagine needing to inject the surgical anesthesia propofol in order to simply sleep at night.
STILL MORE AMAZING: The production design, which turns real New York locations into Oz, is breathtaking. (This is the only film in history that features an end credit shout-out: “Yellow Brick Road provided by Congoleum.”) Stan Winston’s special make-up designs are some of his career-best, especially the prosthetic make-ups on The Tin Man, the Flying Monkeys, and the Crows. Quincy Jones’ arrangements of the show’s original songs are also quite good.
THE BOTCHED: Diana Ross is miscast as Dorothy. She tries her damnedest, but she’s too old for the part. Ross comes across as an overly serious, pinch-faced scold, and is saddled with nothing but second-rate ballads. The entire enterprise is placed on her shoulders and, though we can see her straining to hold the whole thing together, she’s just not up to the task.Ross is not helped by the script, penned by a young Joel Schumacher. It gleefully tosses out every line of dialogue from the Broadway smash and replaces it with what can only be described as self-improvement platitudes straight from the work of Werner Erhard and the then-popular “EST” movement. Apparently, both Diana Ross and Joel Schumacher were acolytes of the self-help guru and were pleased that their film could reflect his important work. Apparently, Lena Horne’s platitude-heavy final speech is a patchwork quilt of Erhard-isms with just enough articles and conjunctions added to make them complete sentences.
REALLY BOTCHED: What really had me shaking my head at my most recent screening was the songs themselves and their placement in the narrative. In its film version, most of The Wiz’s narrative momentum is lost by bad song choices, lack of editing, and redundancy. Quincy Jones and the film’s producers chucked eleven—ELEVEN—of the Broadway show’s original songs and added new ones. This leads to a frustrating doubling of the show’s themes. Theresa Merritt sings “The Feeling That We Had” at Thanksgiving dinner, and it’s beautiful. Then, Diana Ross immediately sings another ballad, “Can I Go On?” (a new song by Quincy Jones, Nickolas Ashford, and Valerie Simpson) and it's simply more of the same.
Nipsey Russell sings “What Would I Do If I Could Feel,” expressing his plight without a heart, then immediately sings “Slide Some Oil to Me,” expressing his plight being rusted shut. I have never seen a Hollywood musical where more characters sing TWO SONGS IN A ROW. Once the producers decided to change the order of the songs, they could have paced things in a way that provided more variety and narrative oomph. In an example of double climax, the clueless filmmakers follow Broadway showstopper “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News” minutes later, with ANOTHER SHOWSTOPPER, “A Brand-New Day,” written for the film by Luther Vandross. This is too much of a good thing.ANOTHER WASTE OF THE AUDIENCE’S TIME is the “Emerald City Sequence” and musical number. When our plucky band of Yellow Brick Road travelers finally arrive at their destination, we are treated to an interminable fashion show wherein hundreds of fashion models strut around the central plaza of the World Trade Center, wearing clothes of a single color, only to have the eponymous Wiz announce every 90 seconds that said color has been changed. What this Met Gala Eye Candy has to do with the plot is anyone’s guess. Oz is a fickle, fashion-crazy town? Perhaps. The green clothes look the best? Well, yes. Real designers like Halston, Ralph Lauren, and Oscar de la Renta supplied the film company with real haute couture fashions? Probably that last one.
BATTLE OF THE SINGING STARS: Four years ago, writing about 1976 snooze-fest A Star is Born, I discussed the film’s "climactic", SEVEN-MINUTE-LONG, UNBROKEN CLOSE-UP OF STAR BARBRA STREISAND. I wrote, “I’m at a loss to name any other Hollywood film that contains an instance of massive ego that even comes close to this.” Well, folks, I’m no longer at a loss. The Wiz has a shot that is the only serious rival to Streisand’s Uber Hubris. Reprising the song “Home,” director Sidney Lumet frames star Diana Ross in an unbroken close-up that goes on for four excruciating minutes. At least in A Star is Born, Babs is singing to an unseen, offscreen audience. In The Wiz, Diana Ross is SINGING RIGHT TO US. We are locked into her unwavering, unrelenting stare.CRYING INTO YOUR BEER: If you are sad because you missed the Fathom Event screening, you are in luck, gentle reader. The esteemed Criterion Collection is poised to release its new 4K Blu-ray disc of The Wiz in just two weeks’ time—June 10—with oodles of extras. Preorder it now... and prepare to ease on down the road!

24 Hours of Movies: Buddy Cops! May 26, 2025
by Patrick Bromley
A marathon of one of my very favorite genres.
The buddy cop movie is a genre I can watch at any time and, more importantly, regardless of its quality. Such is my affection for the formula that even the weakest entry is going to provide some enjoyment. To test this theory, let's watch 24 consecutive hours of buddy cops. They're gonna solve this case...if they don't kill each other first!
10 am - Tango & Cash (1989, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky)I originally thought about starting at the beginning with something like Busting but I realized that's for more advanced studies and not the right foot on which to begin. This movie, on the other hand, is exactly how we want to start things off: pure nonsense dripping with testosterone, bursting at the seams with oversized action and stupid one-liners, and Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell literally having a dick measuring contest. Here's a rare case in which a troubled production actually improved the movie because all of the chaos and nonsense happening behind the scenes translates directly to the finished film. It's practically a live-action cartoon, violent and silly and totally self-aware. The score is a banger and Kurt Russell walks away with the whole thing because he rules.
Noon - Busting (1974, dir. Peter Hyams)Now that we are appropriately warmed up, we can graduate to more advanced studies like Peter Hyams proto-buddy cop drama Busting, in which Robert Blake and prime Elliott Gould play partners trying to take down a crime boss only to have their hands tied by departmental corruption. The two actors have incredible chemistry and invent a new type of delivery best described as Speed Mumbling. The film's cynicism is perfectly in keeping with the decade out of which it was born, and while it may be early in our marathon for such a bummer ending, it just means we have nowhere to go but up.
1:30 pm - Yes, Madam (1985, dir. Corey Yuen)And up we go! One of only a handful of female-led buddy cop movies (we'll have at least one more later) is among my favorite Hong Kong action films of the 1980s, starring Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock -- two of the best to ever do it -- in a story of cops in China trying to recover a microfilm containing evidence of illegal activity. Whereas Busting is a gritty, bitter pill, Yes, Madam is pure sugar rush: a hyper-energetic ballet of combat courtesy of two incredible stars, director Corey Yuen, and producer Sammo Hung. The legendary team-up of Yeoh (in her first starring role) and Rothrock alone would make this a classic, but it's a kickass action movie on top of that casting. I just wish such a large portion of the runtime wouldn't have been handed over to those two goofballs.
3:15 pm - 2 Guns (2013, dir. Baltasar Kormákur)Running a movie marathon isn't just about playing great movie after great movie. Sometimes you want some filler so the highs feel higher. That's 2 Guns, a serviceable buddy cop programmer in which Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg play a DEA agent and a naval officer, respectively, who have to team up when they're burned by their agencies over some stolen money. There's almost nothing remarkable about this movie except the presence of Denzel and Paula Patton as his fellow DEA agent girlfriend, but that's enough for a casual viewing, especially this early in our 24 hours. Wahlberg does his best to ruin things but his character is meant to be obnoxious so I can forgive it a little. Did I mention Paula Patton?
5:15 - K-9 (1989, dir. Rod Daniel)When programming a marathon of movies all in the same genre, it can become challenging to find ways to mix things up so it doesn't just feel like we're watching the same film 12 times in a row. One way of doing that in this instance is by programming at least one interspecies buddy cop movie, so I'm going with K-9 because a) Turner & Hooch would just leave us all crying and b) I'm not going to program Theodore Rex. One of my hottest film takes is that I don't mind Jim Belushi as an actor, and while this movie puts that to the test (his schtick has always been false bravado and machismo, turned up to 10 here), it's offset by the presence of adorable German Shepherd Jerry Lee as his partner. They make a cute couple. I just saw this for the first time when putting this marathon together and was expecting something super PG-family-friendly; instead, this movie is surprisingly horny and violent. Not all of it involves the dog.
7 pm - Lethal Weapon (1987, dir. Richard Donner)Our Primetime Pizza slot goes to one of the best buddy cop movies of all time, written by a young up-and-comer named Shane Black and directed by veteran stalwart Richard Donner at the top of his game. Danny Glover is the buttoned-up family man and Mel Gibson is the maniac cop with a death wish; the pair team up to solve a murder that eventually reveals much larger criminal dealings at work. This may be an unpopular opinion -- the consensus seems to be online that 2 is the superior film -- but I think the original Lethal Weapon is a pretty perfect buddy cop movie. There's humor in the film but it's not silly and is rooted in character rather than the total fuckarounds to which the series would eventually give itself over. The dynamic between the pair is the best it would get, it has the strongest villain, and the action has true stakes because Donner and Black mean that shit.
9 pm - The Heat (2013, dir. Paul Feig)Outside of Yes, Madam, there aren't a ton of female-led buddy cop movies, and the ones that do exist aren't especially good. The Heat is a good one. Directed by Paul Feig at a time that meant something, it pairs Sandra Bullock as an uptight FBI agent and Melissa McCarthy as a foul-mouthed Boston cop. The two have good chemistry and are very funny together, particularly as the story progresses to a point where they stop bickering and learn to care about one another, a theme that the film actually earns. Unlike, say, Running Scared -- which is one of the best buddy cop movies ever made and functions as both a comedy and a successful cop movie -- The Heat is very much a comedy that just happens to be about buddy cops. Like a lot of post-Apatow comedies of this period, this one is overstuffed and overlong; with 20 minutes cut out I'd be willing to bump it up a full star.
11 pm - Alien Nation (1988, dir. Graham Baker)As we gradually head into the overnight section of our buddy cop marathon, I want to start mixing genres. Alien Nation, a movie I'm pretty sure I've seen only once, combines a hard boiled detective movie with science fiction in a way that's more interesting than it is entirely successful (again, that's only my memory talking). James Caan is paired up with Mandy Patinkin, playing the first alien member of the LAPD under prosthetics, attempting to solve a murder and not destroy the tenuous relationship between humans and Newcomers, the name given to the aliens on Earth. I'm mostly programming this here so I can find out if it's any good because I don't remember. I do know it inspired a FOX television series that was beloved in certain circles and ran for only one seasons though I would have sworn it ran for five.
12:30 am - Dead Heat (1988, dir. Mark Goldblatt)Editor-turned-director Mark Goldblatt only made two movies, both action films and both for New World. His second feature was the 1989 adaptation of The Punisher, a bad Punisher movie but a terrific '80s action movie. His first, Dead Heat, is going to be perfect for the midnight slot because it's one of the few buddy cop horror movies I can think of, in which a typically delightful Treat Williams (along with partner Joe Piscopo) is killed and resurrected as a zombie trying to solve his own murder. The comic relief from Piscopo never, ever lands, but the rest of the film has a great sense of humor and a zippy pace, plus cool practical and makeup effects courtesy of Steve Johnson.
2 am - The Hidden (1987, dir. Jack Sholder)Here's another buddy cop movie infused with sci-fi elements, like Alien Nation teaming a street cop (Michael Nouri) with an extra-terrestrial visitor (Kyle Maclachlan) in search of a life form with the ability to jump from host to host. It's a premise so good that it would be ripped off a few years later for Jason Goes to Hell. Director Jack Sholder's background as an editor really comes through here, as this is a pulpy and propulsive actioner with just the right amount of offbeat humor. It's the perfect movie to keep us awake overnight.
3:45 am - Cop Out (2010, dir. Kevin Smith)I want to ease our way out of the overnight portion of our marathon with something stupid and easy and Cop Out fits the bill. Intended as Kevin Smith's audition into the world of bigger for-hire studio gigs, the movie wound up a critical disaster, a commercial bomb, and a miserable experience for almost everyone involved. Bruce Willis is openly unhappy as a veteran cop trying to recover a stolen baseball card to pay for his daughter's wedding, while Tracy Morgan works overtime trying to compensate as Willis' wacky partner. The main reason I want to include it in the marathon is because it's a buddy cop movie about being a buddy cop movie, which is to say Smith clearly has a ton of affection for the genre and leans into as many tropes as possible, down to getting Harold Faltermeyer to compose the score. I admire the effort even though it mostly doesn't work. I'm still glad we have this movie, though, because a) I don't hate it and b) without it, we wouldn't have gotten Smith's weirder, more experimental phase that yielded movies like Red State and Tusk.
5:45 am - Number One With a Bullet (1987, dir. Jack Smight)I love this buddy cop movie from Cannon, even though I'm still not sure if it's playing it straight or intended to be a spoof of buddy cop movies. Robert Carradine seems miscast as Det. Nick Barzack (aka Ber-zerk), but that's part of the fun. Billy Dee Williams gets nothing to do but be cool, sleep with women, and play the jazz trumpet, like he just walked off the set of a Colt .45 commercial and no one told him he was shooting a movie. It seems to be a legitimate entry in the buddy cop genre, but then we'll get a shot of Carradine cutting up pieces of raw steak with his pocket knife for dinner and chasing it with swigs of Worcestershire sauce straight from the bottle and I'm convinced it's all supposed to be funny. Fun fact: the music for the movie is done by Alf Clausen, best known for scoring 25 years of The Simpsons. Even more fun fact: this movie has four credited writers, one of whom is K-9 star Jim Belushi, who for sure wrote the part of Barzack for himself.
7:30 am - Freebie and the Bean (1974, dir. Richard Rush)Released the same year as Peter Hyams' Busting, Richard Rush's Freebie and the Bean is one of the earliest examples of the buddy cop genre, codifying the next 50 years through ad-libbed dialogue and chemistry between stars Alan Arkin and James Caan that made the movie much funnier than originally scripted. As partners taking on organized crime, Caan and Arkin mostly insult one another and create havoc on the streets of San Franciso, but it's super fun and feels edgy in ways that haven't all dated well (Valerie Harper would most likely not be cast as Latina these days), but its lack of political correctness is a feature and not a bug. We have to program one of the originators of the genre in the marathon because here at FTM we respect our elders.
9:30 am - Bad Boys II (2003, dir. Michael Bay)Shit just got real. We'll end as we began: with pure chaos. I can't think of a bigger, badder buddy cop movie, one that's practically gleeful in its hateful nihilism. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return as Miami's finest, this time taking down a drug dealer with the help of Lawrence's sister (played by Gabrielle Union), whom Smith is dating in secret. This is pure Bayhem: 360 degree shootouts, freeway chases, entire cities irresponsibly leveled by cops doing whatever the fuck they want. I love the idea of ending a 24-hour marathon on a movie this numbing in its scale and its ugliness. If we're gonna go down, let's go down guns blazing.

24 Hours of Movies: Buddy Cops! May 26, 2025
by Patrick Bromley
A marathon of one of my very favorite genres.
The buddy cop movie is a genre I can watch at any time and, more importantly, regardless of its quality. Such is my affection for the formula that even the weakest entry is going to provide some enjoyment. To test this theory, let's watch 24 consecutive hours of buddy cops. They're gonna solve this case...if they don't kill each other first!
10 am - Tango & Cash (1989, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky)I originally thought about starting at the beginning with something like Busting but I realized that's for more advanced studies and not the right foot on which to begin. This movie, on the other hand, is exactly how we want to start things off: pure nonsense dripping with testosterone, bursting at the seams with oversized action and stupid one-liners, and Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell literally having a dick measuring contest. Here's a rare case in which a troubled production actually improved the movie because all of the chaos and nonsense happening behind the scenes translates directly to the finished film. It's practically a live-action cartoon, violent and silly and totally self-aware. The score is a banger and Kurt Russell walks away with the whole thing because he rules.
Noon - Busting (1974, dir. Peter Hyams)Now that we are appropriately warmed up, we can graduate to more advanced studies like Peter Hyams proto-buddy cop drama Busting, in which Robert Blake and prime Elliott Gould play partners trying to take down a crime boss only to have their hands tied by departmental corruption. The two actors have incredible chemistry and invent a new type of delivery best described as Speed Mumbling. The film's cynicism is perfectly in keeping with the decade out of which it was born, and while it may be early in our marathon for such a bummer ending, it just means we have nowhere to go but up.
1:30 pm - Yes, Madam (1985, dir. Corey Yuen)And up we go! One of only a handful of female-led buddy cop movies (we'll have at least one more later) is among my favorite Hong Kong action films of the 1980s, starring Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock -- two of the best to ever do it -- in a story of cops in China trying to recover a microfilm containing evidence of illegal activity. Whereas Busting is a gritty, bitter pill, Yes, Madam is pure sugar rush: a hyper-energetic ballet of combat courtesy of two incredible stars, director Corey Yuen, and producer Sammo Hung. The legendary team-up of Yeoh (in her first starring role) and Rothrock alone would make this a classic, but it's a kickass action movie on top of that casting. I just wish such a large portion of the runtime wouldn't have been handed over to those two goofballs.
3:15 pm - 2 Guns (2013, dir. Baltasar Kormákur)Running a movie marathon isn't just about playing great movie after great movie. Sometimes you want some filler so the highs feel higher. That's 2 Guns, a serviceable buddy cop programmer in which Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg play a DEA agent and a naval officer, respectively, who have to team up when they're burned by their agencies over some stolen money. There's almost nothing remarkable about this movie except the presence of Denzel and Paula Patton as his fellow DEA agent girlfriend, but that's enough for a casual viewing, especially this early in our 24 hours. Wahlberg does his best to ruin things but his character is meant to be obnoxious so I can forgive it a little. Did I mention Paula Patton?
5:15 - K-9 (1989, dir. Rod Daniel)When programming a marathon of movies all in the same genre, it can become challenging to find ways to mix things up so it doesn't just feel like we're watching the same film 12 times in a row. One way of doing that in this instance is by programming at least one interspecies buddy cop movie, so I'm going with K-9 because a) Turner & Hooch would just leave us all crying and b) I'm not going to program Theodore Rex. One of my hottest film takes is that I don't mind Jim Belushi as an actor, and while this movie puts that to the test (his schtick has always been false bravado and machismo, turned up to 10 here), it's offset by the presence of adorable German Shepherd Jerry Lee as his partner. They make a cute couple. I just saw this for the first time when putting this marathon together and was expecting something super PG-family-friendly; instead, this movie is surprisingly horny and violent. Not all of it involves the dog.
7 pm - Lethal Weapon (1987, dir. Richard Donner)Our Primetime Pizza slot goes to one of the best buddy cop movies of all time, written by a young up-and-comer named Shane Black and directed by veteran stalwart Richard Donner at the top of his game. Danny Glover is the buttoned-up family man and Mel Gibson is the maniac cop with a death wish; the pair team up to solve a murder that eventually reveals much larger criminal dealings at work. This may be an unpopular opinion -- the consensus seems to be online that 2 is the superior film -- but I think the original Lethal Weapon is a pretty perfect buddy cop movie. There's humor in the film but it's not silly and is rooted in character rather than the total fuckarounds to which the series would eventually give itself over. The dynamic between the pair is the best it would get, it has the strongest villain, and the action has true stakes because Donner and Black mean that shit.
9 pm - The Heat (2013, dir. Paul Feig)Outside of Yes, Madam, there aren't a ton of female-led buddy cop movies, and the ones that do exist aren't especially good. The Heat is a good one. Directed by Paul Feig at a time that meant something, it pairs Sandra Bullock as an uptight FBI agent and Melissa McCarthy as a foul-mouthed Boston cop. The two have good chemistry and are very funny together, particularly as the story progresses to a point where they stop bickering and learn to care about one another, a theme that the film actually earns. Unlike, say, Running Scared -- which is one of the best buddy cop movies ever made and functions as both a comedy and a successful cop movie -- The Heat is very much a comedy that just happens to be about buddy cops. Like a lot of post-Apatow comedies of this period, this one is overstuffed and overlong; with 20 minutes cut out I'd be willing to bump it up a full star.
11 pm - Alien Nation (1988, dir. Graham Baker)As we gradually head into the overnight section of our buddy cop marathon, I want to start mixing genres. Alien Nation, a movie I'm pretty sure I've seen only once, combines a hard boiled detective movie with science fiction in a way that's more interesting than it is entirely successful (again, that's only my memory talking). James Caan is paired up with Mandy Patinkin, playing the first alien member of the LAPD under prosthetics, attempting to solve a murder and not destroy the tenuous relationship between humans and Newcomers, the name given to the aliens on Earth. I'm mostly programming this here so I can find out if it's any good because I don't remember. I do know it inspired a FOX television series that was beloved in certain circles and ran for only one seasons though I would have sworn it ran for five.
12:30 am - Dead Heat (1988, dir. Mark Goldblatt)Editor-turned-director Mark Goldblatt only made two movies, both action films and both for New World. His second feature was the 1989 adaptation of The Punisher, a bad Punisher movie but a terrific '80s action movie. His first, Dead Heat, is going to be perfect for the midnight slot because it's one of the few buddy cop horror movies I can think of, in which a typically delightful Treat Williams (along with partner Joe Piscopo) is killed and resurrected as a zombie trying to solve his own murder. The comic relief from Piscopo never, ever lands, but the rest of the film has a great sense of humor and a zippy pace, plus cool practical and makeup effects courtesy of Steve Johnson.
2 am - The Hidden (1987, dir. Jack Sholder)Here's another buddy cop movie infused with sci-fi elements, like Alien Nation teaming a street cop (Michael Nouri) with an extra-terrestrial visitor (Kyle Maclachlan) in search of a life form with the ability to jump from host to host. It's a premise so good that it would be ripped off a few years later for Jason Goes to Hell. Director Jack Sholder's background as an editor really comes through here, as this is a pulpy and propulsive actioner with just the right amount of offbeat humor. It's the perfect movie to keep us awake overnight.
3:45 am - Cop Out (2010, dir. Kevin Smith)I want to ease our way out of the overnight portion of our marathon with something stupid and easy and Cop Out fits the bill. Intended as Kevin Smith's audition into the world of bigger for-hire studio gigs, the movie wound up a critical disaster, a commercial bomb, and a miserable experience for almost everyone involved. Bruce Willis is openly unhappy as a veteran cop trying to recover a stolen baseball card to pay for his daughter's wedding, while Tracy Morgan works overtime trying to compensate as Willis' wacky partner. The main reason I want to include it in the marathon is because it's a buddy cop movie about being a buddy cop movie, which is to say Smith clearly has a ton of affection for the genre and leans into as many tropes as possible, down to getting Harold Faltermeyer to compose the score. I admire the effort even though it mostly doesn't work. I'm still glad we have this movie, though, because a) I don't hate it and b) without it, we wouldn't have gotten Smith's weirder, more experimental phase that yielded movies like Red State and Tusk.
5:45 am - Number One With a Bullet (1987, dir. Jack Smight)I love this buddy cop movie from Cannon, even though I'm still not sure if it's playing it straight or intended to be a spoof of buddy cop movies. Robert Carradine seems miscast as Det. Nick Barzack (aka Ber-zerk), but that's part of the fun. Billy Dee Williams gets nothing to do but be cool, sleep with women, and play the jazz trumpet, like he just walked off the set of a Colt .45 commercial and no one told him he was shooting a movie. It seems to be a legitimate entry in the buddy cop genre, but then we'll get a shot of Carradine cutting up pieces of raw steak with his pocket knife for dinner and chasing it with swigs of Worcestershire sauce straight from the bottle and I'm convinced it's all supposed to be funny. Fun fact: the music for the movie is done by Alf Clausen, best known for scoring 25 years of The Simpsons. Even more fun fact: this movie has four credited writers, one of whom is K-9 star Jim Belushi, who for sure wrote the part of Barzack for himself.
7:30 am - Freebie and the Bean (1974, dir. Richard Rush)Released the same year as Peter Hyams' Busting, Richard Rush's Freebie and the Bean is one of the earliest examples of the buddy cop genre, codifying the next 50 years through ad-libbed dialogue and chemistry between stars Alan Arkin and James Caan that made the movie much funnier than originally scripted. As partners taking on organized crime, Caan and Arkin mostly insult one another and create havoc on the streets of San Franciso, but it's super fun and feels edgy in ways that haven't all dated well (Valerie Harper would most likely not be cast as Latina these days), but its lack of political correctness is a feature and not a bug. We have to program one of the originators of the genre in the marathon because here at FTM we respect our elders.
9:30 am - Bad Boys II (2003, dir. Michael Bay)Shit just got real. We'll end as we began: with pure chaos. I can't think of a bigger, badder buddy cop movie, one that's practically gleeful in its hateful nihilism. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return as Miami's finest, this time taking down a drug dealer with the help of Lawrence's sister (played by Gabrielle Union), whom Smith is dating in secret. This is pure Bayhem: 360 degree shootouts, freeway chases, entire cities irresponsibly leveled by cops doing whatever the fuck they want. I love the idea of ending a 24-hour marathon on a movie this numbing in its scale and its ugliness. If we're gonna go down, let's go down guns blazing.

Weekend Open Thread May 24, 2025

Review: THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME May 23, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
“Help yourself to a hand grenade.”
The Phoenician Scheme opens, as most Wes Anderson productions do, on an impossibly neat and aesthetically precise palette of dioramic splendor: A subtitle places us somewhere over Eastern Europe circa 1950. Our first shot is of mustachioed business mogul Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) seated comfortably in the cabin of his private aircraft. He holds a cigar in one hand, while one of the many imposing-looking tomes we’ll see him devour — each one with typically arcanic titles like Important Patrons of the High Renaissance — sits in the other. Three rows back, in a bucket seat near a window on the opposite side of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel’s meticulous frame, is his young assistant. The usual bits and bobs of Andersonian sundry fill out the rest of the shot, and it’s just as the audience is starting to wonder how The Phoenician Scheme will distinguish itself from the auteur’s other mid-century dollhouse pictures that a sudden explosion rips the young assistant in half at the waist and sprays his bloody viscera all over the cabin.There’s no need for alarm, though, not even as the plane loses cabin pressure and crashes headlong into a remote wheat field. These mishaps are typical for Korda, a scoundrel of such ill repute that he’d need more than the usual allotment of fingers and toes to count all the attempts on his life. Assassination is just the price of doing business for Korda, who carries no passport, claims no nation as his home, and, until now, has seen no reason to build relationships with any of his ten children. This latest incident is notable only because it comes as Korda plots his great masterwork: The titular Phoenician Scheme, a complicated infrastructural boondoggle involving a consortium of multinational engineering and construction firms (headed by the likes of Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, and Riz Ahmed). Eager to secure his legacy, Korda recruits his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton as the devout Sister Lisel) and new assistant (Michael Cera as Bjørn) on a cross-country jaunt to finalize the negotiations.
We’ll meet other colorful characters along the way, of course, including Richard Ayoade’s militant communist revolutionary and Benedict Cumberbatch’s nefarious Uncle Nubar, whose feud with Korda stems from unspoken resentments related to the murder of Lisel’s late mother. We’ll even meet God (Bill Murray because, well, who else?) and his choir of heavenly cherubim (Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, F. Murray Abraham, and others) in a series of out-of-body hallucinations that force Korda to reckon with a life spent amassing a fortune at the expense of his humanity. Yes, Anderson is back in Bad Dad Faces Death territory, a theme that defines both career highlights like The Royal Tenenbaums and unfairly maligned works like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. We’re also ruminating on memory and purpose à la The Grand Budapest Hotel and Asteroid City, stories about, at least in part, the reconstitution of dreams once sacrificed in the name of survival.And while this may all sound like too much soup for one bowl, The Phoenician Scheme is delightfully light on its feet and understated in its execution. Eschewing the complicated framing devices of Asteroid City and the abrupt episodic shifts of The French Dispatch, Anderson and frequent writing collaborator Roman Coppola unfurl the film’s half-dozen chapters with an urgency and deftness that recall earlier — it must be said, simpler — works like Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom. Benicio del Toro plays Korda as a world-class bullshitter in the same league as Royal Tenenbaum and Steve Zissou, but there’s a little Fantastic Mr. Fox to him, as well, an endearing pragmatism that softens the ground around him even as he struggles to get off his back foot. Newcomer Mia Threapleton brings a confidence befitting her pedigree — she’s the daughter of Kate Winslet and director Jim Threapleton — and her tête-à-têtes with del Toro and Cera are seasoned with the same winning vulnerability that underlines the very best of Anderson’s character work.This reliance on familiar melodies doesn’t mean that The Phoenician Scheme lacks the profundity of Anderson’s more complex stories, however, merely that its breeziness makes those themes a bit easier to digest as a whole. Anderson is still wrangling with infinity and using empathy as a tonic for the absurdity of the universe — The Phoenician Scheme’s epilogue is perhaps the most nakedly romantic movement we’ve seen from the director in the last few years — and we’re still treated to all the usual oddities and non-sequiturs, including a rambunctious fraternal wrestling match, a two-on-two basketball shootout with fortunes at stake, and what might be the funniest use of dynamite since Wile E. Coyote. That The Phoenician Scheme feels “easy” doesn’t make it any less of a technical achievement, either, as its production design, costuming, and score are as immaculate as anything in Anderson’s filmography. We’re simply a bit spoiled, I think, by a creative voice so well-honed and self-assured that we’re at constant risk of taking it for granted.
The Phoenician Scheme hits U.S. theaters on Friday, May 30th.

Review: THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME May 23, 2025
by Rob DiCristino
“Help yourself to a hand grenade.”
The Phoenician Scheme opens, as most Wes Anderson productions do, on an impossibly neat and aesthetically precise palette of dioramic splendor: A subtitle places us somewhere over Eastern Europe circa 1950. Our first shot is of mustachioed business mogul Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) seated comfortably in the cabin of his private aircraft. He holds a cigar in one hand, while one of the many imposing-looking tomes we’ll see him devour — each one with typically arcanic titles like Important Patrons of the High Renaissance — sits in the other. Three rows back, in a bucket seat near a window on the opposite side of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel’s meticulous frame, is his young assistant. The usual bits and bobs of Andersonian sundry fill out the rest of the shot, and it’s just as the audience is starting to wonder how The Phoenician Scheme will distinguish itself from the auteur’s other mid-century dollhouse pictures that a sudden explosion rips the young assistant in half at the waist and sprays his bloody viscera all over the cabin.There’s no need for alarm, though, not even as the plane loses cabin pressure and crashes headlong into a remote wheat field. These mishaps are typical for Korda, a scoundrel of such ill repute that he’d need more than the usual allotment of fingers and toes to count all the attempts on his life. Assassination is just the price of doing business for Korda, who carries no passport, claims no nation as his home, and, until now, has seen no reason to build relationships with any of his ten children. This latest incident is notable only because it comes as Korda plots his great masterwork: The titular Phoenician Scheme, a complicated infrastructural boondoggle involving a consortium of multinational engineering and construction firms (headed by the likes of Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, and Riz Ahmed). Eager to secure his legacy, Korda recruits his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton as the devout Sister Lisel) and new assistant (Michael Cera as Bjørn) on a cross-country jaunt to finalize the negotiations.
We’ll meet other colorful characters along the way, of course, including Richard Ayoade’s militant communist revolutionary and Benedict Cumberbatch’s nefarious Uncle Nubar, whose feud with Korda stems from unspoken resentments related to the murder of Lisel’s late mother. We’ll even meet God (Bill Murray because, well, who else?) and his choir of heavenly cherubim (Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, F. Murray Abraham, and others) in a series of out-of-body hallucinations that force Korda to reckon with a life spent amassing a fortune at the expense of his humanity. Yes, Anderson is back in Bad Dad Faces Death territory, a theme that defines both career highlights like The Royal Tenenbaums and unfairly maligned works like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. We’re also ruminating on memory and purpose à la The Grand Budapest Hotel and Asteroid City, stories about, at least in part, the reconstitution of dreams once sacrificed in the name of survival.And while this may all sound like too much soup for one bowl, The Phoenician Scheme is delightfully light on its feet and understated in its execution. Eschewing the complicated framing devices of Asteroid City and the abrupt episodic shifts of The French Dispatch, Anderson and frequent writing collaborator Roman Coppola unfurl the film’s half-dozen chapters with an urgency and deftness that recall earlier — it must be said, simpler — works like Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom. Benicio del Toro plays Korda as a world-class bullshitter in the same league as Royal Tenenbaum and Steve Zissou, but there’s a little Fantastic Mr. Fox to him, as well, an endearing pragmatism that softens the ground around him even as he struggles to get off his back foot. Newcomer Mia Threapleton brings a confidence befitting her pedigree — she’s the daughter of Kate Winslet and director Jim Threapleton — and her tête-à-têtes with del Toro and Cera are seasoned with the same winning vulnerability that underlines the very best of Anderson’s character work.This reliance on familiar melodies doesn’t mean that The Phoenician Scheme lacks the profundity of Anderson’s more complex stories, however, merely that its breeziness makes those themes a bit easier to digest as a whole. Anderson is still wrangling with infinity and using empathy as a tonic for the absurdity of the universe — The Phoenician Scheme’s epilogue is perhaps the most nakedly romantic movement we’ve seen from the director in the last few years — and we’re still treated to all the usual oddities and non-sequiturs, including a rambunctious fraternal wrestling match, a two-on-two basketball shootout with fortunes at stake, and what might be the funniest use of dynamite since Wile E. Coyote. That The Phoenician Scheme feels “easy” doesn’t make it any less of a technical achievement, either, as its production design, costuming, and score are as immaculate as anything in Anderson’s filmography. We’re simply a bit spoiled, I think, by a creative voice so well-honed and self-assured that we’re at constant risk of taking it for granted.
The Phoenician Scheme hits U.S. theaters on Friday, May 30th.

Reserved Seating: May 2025 Mailbag May 22, 2025
The review duo (with special guests Mike and Patrick!) who open the mailbag to discuss your urgent movie questions.

2K Replay: STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH May 21, 2025
by Adam Riske
Nominated for “Best Menu Design” at the DVD Exclusive Awards. It lost to The Incredibles.
• Best Scene/Moment: “You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!” That’s some real shit right there and Ewan McGregor sells it big time.
• Best Song: “A New Hope and End Credits” by John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra. “Anakin vs. Obi-Wan” is also very good.• Best Merch: “Revenge of the Sith 20th Anniversary Collection - Crocs…” for $79.99. These are ugly shoes. Yet, I kinda like them. The lightsaber battle design is neat. I just wish it didn’t look like you’re putting your feet into two slices of carnival pizza.
• Director Grade: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith was directed by George Lucas.
Great Movies: American Graffiti, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
Good Movies: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
OK Movies: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Bad Movies: N/A
Unseen By Me: THX 1138
Overall Grade: A-
• Double It with This 2005 Movie: The Island
• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Robots, Serenity, XXX: State of the Union
• Never Talk to Strangers or Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith? Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith• Mall Movie? Nope. Star Wars would start at the big, fancy theater in town. It might play at the mall near the end of its run.
• Only in 2005: General Grievous. I’ve never heard anyone bring up General Grievous since 2005 and when Revenge of the Sith came out the movie was like “C’mon, you guys know General Grievous. He’s been around this entire time.”
• Scene Stealer: Ian McDiarmid.
• I Miss: Star Wars feeling special. Now even the Star Wars movies I really like feel a bit watered down.
• I Don’t Miss (tie): The Anakin-Padme love story. I’m a defender of the prequels but I can’t defend their dialogue in the romance scenes. Also, Mace Windu. I like Samuel L. Jackson, but Windu’s a real pain in the ass. I understand why Anakin was so annoyed with him.• 2005 Crush: Natalie Portman.
• 2025 Crush: Natalie Portman.
• What I Thought in 2005: I really liked Revenge of the Sith (especially the second half) and didn’t understand why people treated it like it was only as good as The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. I thought they completely stuck the landing and Sith retroactively made the first two prequels better.
• What I Think in 2025: It’s still good! I don’t have as much enthusiasm for Revenge of the Sith as I used to because of general Star Wars fatigue, but I still think Sith is one of the better trilogy finales among blockbuster franchises. I appreciate Hayden Christensen’s performance more than most, I assume, because I think he gets the brattiness and entitlement of Anakin and that’s more interesting than if he was a big bad with gravitas (i.e. Darth Vadar) all along. Plus, Ewan McGregor is great in this. I really feel his devastation and that’s the heartbeat of the movie and trilogy altogether.

2K Replay: STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH May 21, 2025
by Adam Riske
Nominated for “Best Menu Design” at the DVD Exclusive Awards. It lost to The Incredibles.
• Best Scene/Moment: “You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!” That’s some real shit right there and Ewan McGregor sells it big time.
• Best Song: “A New Hope and End Credits” by John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra. “Anakin vs. Obi-Wan” is also very good.• Best Merch: “Revenge of the Sith 20th Anniversary Collection - Crocs…” for $79.99. These are ugly shoes. Yet, I kinda like them. The lightsaber battle design is neat. I just wish it didn’t look like you’re putting your feet into two slices of carnival pizza.
• Director Grade: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith was directed by George Lucas.
Great Movies: American Graffiti, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
Good Movies: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
OK Movies: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Bad Movies: N/A
Unseen By Me: THX 1138
Overall Grade: A-
• Double It with This 2005 Movie: The Island
• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Robots, Serenity, XXX: State of the Union
• Never Talk to Strangers or Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith? Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith• Mall Movie? Nope. Star Wars would start at the big, fancy theater in town. It might play at the mall near the end of its run.
• Only in 2005: General Grievous. I’ve never heard anyone bring up General Grievous since 2005 and when Revenge of the Sith came out the movie was like “C’mon, you guys know General Grievous. He’s been around this entire time.”
• Scene Stealer: Ian McDiarmid.
• I Miss: Star Wars feeling special. Now even the Star Wars movies I really like feel a bit watered down.
• I Don’t Miss (tie): The Anakin-Padme love story. I’m a defender of the prequels but I can’t defend their dialogue in the romance scenes. Also, Mace Windu. I like Samuel L. Jackson, but Windu’s a real pain in the ass. I understand why Anakin was so annoyed with him.• 2005 Crush: Natalie Portman.
• 2025 Crush: Natalie Portman.
• What I Thought in 2005: I really liked Revenge of the Sith (especially the second half) and didn’t understand why people treated it like it was only as good as The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. I thought they completely stuck the landing and Sith retroactively made the first two prequels better.
• What I Think in 2025: It’s still good! I don’t have as much enthusiasm for Revenge of the Sith as I used to because of general Star Wars fatigue, but I still think Sith is one of the better trilogy finales among blockbuster franchises. I appreciate Hayden Christensen’s performance more than most, I assume, because I think he gets the brattiness and entitlement of Anakin and that’s more interesting than if he was a big bad with gravitas (i.e. Darth Vadar) all along. Plus, Ewan McGregor is great in this. I really feel his devastation and that’s the heartbeat of the movie and trilogy altogether.

FTM 772: OOPS ALL SNAPS May 21, 2025
Patrick and Adam Riske talk about six movies from their collections, all on snapcase DVD.
Download this episode here.
Subscribe to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.
Also discussed this episode: Fight or Flight (2025), The Surfer (2025), Thunderbolts* (2025), Batman Begins (2005), The Spy Who Loved Me (197?), License to Drive (1988), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Three Wishes (1995), Heart Eyes (2025), Into the Pit (2009), 10 Items or Less (2006), Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)

It Came from the '80s: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TENNESEE BUCK May 20, 2025
by Patrick BromleyA sleazy rip-off I shouldn't have seen when I did.
I was 11 years old when I saw The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck on opening night. It was a sleepover party for a friend's birthday and we were looking to go see a movie at the $1 second-run theater. Our choices of what had made the leap from first to second-run that week were limited: the Dennis Quaid remake of D.O.A. and Blake Edwards' Sunset, a movie about Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp solving a crime (Tom Mix wept). I've since seen both titles and they're fine, but there's not much there to appeal to a group of 11-year old boys. Then we noticed a listing for The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck, a title I immediately recognized as having bypassed a first-run release altogether and was opening at the second-run dollar theater. There was no YouTube to watch a trailer, no internet on which to read reviews or even a plot synopsis. There was only a tiny newspaper ad promising some kind of adventure. I didn't care what the movie was about; all that mattered to me was that this was a movie making its debut at the dollar theater. I had to know what that looked like.
And so it came to be that I was one of only a handful of people on the planet that got to see a 35mm print of The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck on opening night, and definitely one of the only children able to make such a claim. Let it be said that this is not an appropriate movie for kids. It's paid cable sleaze, full of gratuitous violence and even more gratuitous nudity. How my friend's mom didn't insist we cover our eyes when Playboy Playmate Kathy Shower gets an oil rub down from several native women remains a mystery. That she did not march us up the aisle and out of the theater when the same character is graphically raped I will never understand. I don't blame her for not knowing what would be in the movie -- no one did -- and I'm sure she was supremely uncomfortable during these scenes, but it's crazy to think we were allowed to sit through it at age 10 or 11. Tennessee Buck is the kind of movie we might sneak late at night when our parents were asleep, not watch three or four seats down from them.An adventure movie by way of USA Up All Night, it stars David Keith (Firestarter) as "Tennesee" Buck Malone, the world's greatest hunter, who is hired as a guide to lead a clueless husband (Brant Van Hoffman) and his beautiful wife (Shower) through the jungles of Borneo. Unfortunately for them, the group is captured by cannibals and hunted for sport. That's pretty much it! What little plot there is also takes over half the movie's 90-minute runtime to kick in, meaning there's about 45 minutes of table setting and character introductions, including an appearance by eternal weirdo Sydney Lassick as this movie's Sallah.
Pitched as a starring vehicle for David Keith, the actor only signed on to do the movie when he was afforded the opportunity to direct it. Trans World Entertainment, uncertain that he could be the one calling the shots on a feature film, first had him direct a low-budget horror movie to prove he had the stuff. That movie was 1987's The Curse, starring Wil Wheaton and adapted from the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Colour Out of Space," years later adapted into a Nicolas Cage movie of the same name. (Fun fact: Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci is credited as a producer on The Curse and is said to have ghost directed some scenes.) Satisfied with the results, Trans World gave Keith the helm of his sophomore feature and shipped cast and crew off to Sri Lanka to make Tennessee Buck.Scripted as a straightforward Indiana Jones rip-off -- primarily a more racist Temple of Doom, the movie's biggest influence -- by original screenwriters Barry and Stuart Jacobs, the project changed course once Keith was brought on to direct. It was Keith who reportedly added most of the movie's humor, dubious as it may be, adding a self-aware style of comedy that starts with the title, on obvious goof on Indy, and reaches all the way to Keith's performance as the title character, a roguish action hero with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. In her feature acting debut, Kathy Shower gives pretty good Willie Scott, remaining a trooper while the film subjects her to varying degrees of sleaze and depravity. Even the Further Adventures gag in the title -- shades there of Leonard Part 6 -- was something that registered with me at age 1l, indicating to me that this film wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. The levity in the movie helps, especially because it doesn't excel much in any area. Though it's never explicitly going for laughs (except maybe the hapless husband played by Brant Van Hoffman, a stand-up comedian whose performance could best be described as "big" or "muggy"), Keith keeps a light enough tone for most of it -- until he doesn't, in those moments when the film pivots to dark and ugly -- that it's easy to shrug off the shortcomings. It's all a lark.What sells Tennessee Buck more than anything, though, is the location photography in Sri Lanka. Shooting in the jungle is tough; shooting in the jungle with little crew and next to no money must have been nearly impossible. so it's to the credit of David Keith and company that they not only made something that uses the locale to their advantage and manages to cut together, but that the movie got finished at all. While the cinematography by Avraham Karpick isn't anything special (it's particularly hard to appreciate in VHS quality, which most rips of the movie are; even what appears to be an HD version streaming on Amazon Prime is in 1.33:1, fucking up the compositions somewhat -- have I mentioned this movie needs a physical Blu-ray release?), there is tremendous beauty and real production value throughout. Cheap B-movies like Tennessee Buck earn their sweaty authenticity by taking chances that bigger productions wouldn't.
I'm not making the case that The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck is an underrated gem, or even that it's especially good. But it is the kind of movie that could have only existed in the 1980s, when cable television and VHS shelves helped determine what movies got made and Steven Spielberg's biggest hits were being mined for exploitation fare. It belongs next to Cannon's King Solomon's Mines in the Indiana Jones Rip-Offs Blu-ray box set. David Keith didn't direct again, which would have made this his Night of the Hunter is not for The Curse (a movie that's not as good as Tennessee Buck). There were no sequels despite the franchise potential of the title character, but I guess that's what happens when your movie gets dumped directly to second-run screens. I saw a lot of movies when I was 11, but few of them stick in my memory quite like this one.

It Came from the '80s: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TENNESEE BUCK May 20, 2025
by Patrick BromleyA sleazy rip-off I shouldn't have seen when I did.
I was 11 years old when I saw The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck on opening night. It was a sleepover party for a friend's birthday and we were looking to go see a movie at the $1 second-run theater. Our choices of what had made the leap from first to second-run that week were limited: the Dennis Quaid remake of D.O.A. and Blake Edwards' Sunset, a movie about Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp solving a crime (Tom Mix wept). I've since seen both titles and they're fine, but there's not much there to appeal to a group of 11-year old boys. Then we noticed a listing for The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck, a title I immediately recognized as having bypassed a first-run release altogether and was opening at the second-run dollar theater. There was no YouTube to watch a trailer, no internet on which to read reviews or even a plot synopsis. There was only a tiny newspaper ad promising some kind of adventure. I didn't care what the movie was about; all that mattered to me was that this was a movie making its debut at the dollar theater. I had to know what that looked like.
And so it came to be that I was one of only a handful of people on the planet that got to see a 35mm print of The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck on opening night, and definitely one of the only children able to make such a claim. Let it be said that this is not an appropriate movie for kids. It's paid cable sleaze, full of gratuitous violence and even more gratuitous nudity. How my friend's mom didn't insist we cover our eyes when Playboy Playmate Kathy Shower gets an oil rub down from several native women remains a mystery. That she did not march us up the aisle and out of the theater when the same character is graphically raped I will never understand. I don't blame her for not knowing what would be in the movie -- no one did -- and I'm sure she was supremely uncomfortable during these scenes, but it's crazy to think we were allowed to sit through it at age 10 or 11. Tennessee Buck is the kind of movie we might sneak late at night when our parents were asleep, not watch three or four seats down from them.An adventure movie by way of USA Up All Night, it stars David Keith (Firestarter) as "Tennesee" Buck Malone, the world's greatest hunter, who is hired as a guide to lead a clueless husband (Brant Van Hoffman) and his beautiful wife (Shower) through the jungles of Borneo. Unfortunately for them, the group is captured by cannibals and hunted for sport. That's pretty much it! What little plot there is also takes over half the movie's 90-minute runtime to kick in, meaning there's about 45 minutes of table setting and character introductions, including an appearance by eternal weirdo Sydney Lassick as this movie's Sallah.
Pitched as a starring vehicle for David Keith, the actor only signed on to do the movie when he was afforded the opportunity to direct it. Trans World Entertainment, uncertain that he could be the one calling the shots on a feature film, first had him direct a low-budget horror movie to prove he had the stuff. That movie was 1987's The Curse, starring Wil Wheaton and adapted from the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Colour Out of Space," years later adapted into a Nicolas Cage movie of the same name. (Fun fact: Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci is credited as a producer on The Curse and is said to have ghost directed some scenes.) Satisfied with the results, Trans World gave Keith the helm of his sophomore feature and shipped cast and crew off to Sri Lanka to make Tennessee Buck.Scripted as a straightforward Indiana Jones rip-off -- primarily a more racist Temple of Doom, the movie's biggest influence -- by original screenwriters Barry and Stuart Jacobs, the project changed course once Keith was brought on to direct. It was Keith who reportedly added most of the movie's humor, dubious as it may be, adding a self-aware style of comedy that starts with the title, on obvious goof on Indy, and reaches all the way to Keith's performance as the title character, a roguish action hero with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. In her feature acting debut, Kathy Shower gives pretty good Willie Scott, remaining a trooper while the film subjects her to varying degrees of sleaze and depravity. Even the Further Adventures gag in the title -- shades there of Leonard Part 6 -- was something that registered with me at age 1l, indicating to me that this film wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. The levity in the movie helps, especially because it doesn't excel much in any area. Though it's never explicitly going for laughs (except maybe the hapless husband played by Brant Van Hoffman, a stand-up comedian whose performance could best be described as "big" or "muggy"), Keith keeps a light enough tone for most of it -- until he doesn't, in those moments when the film pivots to dark and ugly -- that it's easy to shrug off the shortcomings. It's all a lark.What sells Tennessee Buck more than anything, though, is the location photography in Sri Lanka. Shooting in the jungle is tough; shooting in the jungle with little crew and next to no money must have been nearly impossible. so it's to the credit of David Keith and company that they not only made something that uses the locale to their advantage and manages to cut together, but that the movie got finished at all. While the cinematography by Avraham Karpick isn't anything special (it's particularly hard to appreciate in VHS quality, which most rips of the movie are; even what appears to be an HD version streaming on Amazon Prime is in 1.33:1, fucking up the compositions somewhat -- have I mentioned this movie needs a physical Blu-ray release?), there is tremendous beauty and real production value throughout. Cheap B-movies like Tennessee Buck earn their sweaty authenticity by taking chances that bigger productions wouldn't.
I'm not making the case that The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck is an underrated gem, or even that it's especially good. But it is the kind of movie that could have only existed in the 1980s, when cable television and VHS shelves helped determine what movies got made and Steven Spielberg's biggest hits were being mined for exploitation fare. It belongs next to Cannon's King Solomon's Mines in the Indiana Jones Rip-Offs Blu-ray box set. David Keith didn't direct again, which would have made this his Night of the Hunter is not for The Curse (a movie that's not as good as Tennessee Buck). There were no sequels despite the franchise potential of the title character, but I guess that's what happens when your movie gets dumped directly to second-run screens. I saw a lot of movies when I was 11, but few of them stick in my memory quite like this one.

Johnny Showtime: KING OF KINGS May 20, 2025
by JB
What if I told you there was a new movie playing in theaters right now starring Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Forest Whitaker? Would you want to go? Of course, you would want to go!
Would it change your mind if it turned out that said film was a faith-based cartoon and all those famous stars merely lent their voices? (Hahaha "Lent" their voices! Catholic joke!) I thought so.
As Patrick Bromley and I discussed on a recent podcast, King of Kings looks very interesting. It’s got that A-list of voice talent. It is the directorial debut for Korean animation wunderkind Jang Seong-Ho. It features Charles Dickens narrating the life of Christ.
WHOA THERE! Before you, like me, conclude that this must be the biggest popular culture non-sequitur of 2025, let me remind you that Dickens actually wrote a children’s book titled The Life of Our Lord. It was not one of his more popular works; I had never heard of it.King of Kings was produced by Angel Studios, which had the surprise hit of 2023 with Sound of Freedom, which grossed 250 million dollars. Angel Studios was also responsible for releasing episodes of The Chosen to theaters, which proved very popular. King of Kings has grossed almost 70 million dollars in one month. Clearly, there is a market for faith-based entertainment.
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: After interrupting a staged reading of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’ son Walter is tricked into listening to his father and mother tell him the story of Jesus Christ. Because this is an animated film, as Walter becomes more enmeshed in the narrative, he and his father are transported from the Dickens house to ancient Nazareth. They feast after the miracle of the loaves and fishes. It is the first time I’ve seen the Palm Sunday procession include a time-traveling Charles Dickens, his son, and their pet cat in the crowd. This sets the stage for other mind-numbing inconsistencies of tone and story.
At this point, the filmmakers lose sight of their frame story with a digression and some weird physical comedy during the famous Palm Sunday procession. Although in the main story, Charles Dickens is telling his son the story in his London study, we are shown the Dickens’ darn cat getting loose in the Jerusalem crowd and Jesus finding it and returning it to little Walter. WTF?This might be the most poorly-conceived children’s film ever made. The single best example of bad plotting might be the five-minute digression, ten minutes before the end of the film, where Dickens quickly consults a book from the shelf and explains original sin to a ten-year old. Then, the story can continue.
Another digression is illustrated in a completely different animation style than the "Old Testament Pixar" style of the main narrative. The digression features woodcuts brought to life with a strange, mechanical repetitiveness that resembles Terry Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python. You know... like in the Bible!
Because the film, at least at the beginning, is aimed at children, Greatest Hits abound. The film is heavy on the miracles: feeding the multitudes, walking on water, curing the sick, raising the dead. You know... stuff kids like! There is also that cartoon cat who fills much too much screen time with failed comic relief.Beyond the fact that the animation is beneath the level of what a precocious middle-schooler can do on her MacBook Pro, the character design is insane. These characters look like the puppety creations in Rankin/Bass animated specials from the 1960s: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Mad Monster Party, and The Year Without a Santa Claus. In fact, King Herod looks a lot like Heat Miser from the latter Rankin/Bass film, but with a beard. Only Heat Miser didn’t order all the babies in Bethlehem to be killed. It’s grotesquely incongruous.I was raised Catholic and as King of Kings progressed, I correctly predicted that the filmmakers would abandon any pretense of telling the story "to children" the closer we get to the end because 1) They LIVE for the “torture-y” parts of the story, or 2) They automatically tell the story the same way once they start, no matter who’s listening. Being scourged? Check. Crown of thorns? Check. Nailed to a cross? Check. Timmy, I know that you are only five, but are you getting this?
Dickens’ son Walter tries to offer Jesus some water as he carries his cross to Golgotha, but he trips and spills it. Is this tragic irony or batshit crazy comic relief? Watching a comical-looking, cartoon Roman centurion pounding nails through Jesus’ palms is… a disturbing mélange of tones.
I began to wonder if the voice talent were all doing some sort of court-ordered, church-sanctioned public service. My wife had a theory that the film’s producers offered them all suitcases full of cash and the chance to record their lines from their own houses in just a few hours. Of course, we cannot ignore the possibility that these esteemed actors believe in their religion and were trying to further the cause. That would be sort of heartwarming. I just wish the movie was better.PASS THE PLATE: During the end credits, the screen exhorted me to stay in my seat because there would be a SPECIAL MESSAGE coming up. This SPECIAL MESSAGE was surely something SPECIAL because the screen featured a count-down timer to it. When the credits ended, I was treated to a montage of children explaining why they enjoyed the film I had just seen (“I loved the cat!”) and wishing that MORE CHILDREN COULD SEE IT. Apparently, that’s where I come in. I was instructed to scan the QR code on the screen with my phone, which would take me to a site where I could pledge money that would be used to PURCHASE MOVIE TICKETS FOR THE LESS FORTUNATE!
This is the Catholicism that I remember from my youth: a confusing, vaguely terrifying religious parable... followed by a request for cash. Amen.

Johnny Showtime: KING OF KINGS May 20, 2025
by JB
What if I told you there was a new movie playing in theaters right now starring Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Forest Whitaker? Would you want to go? Of course, you would want to go!
Would it change your mind if it turned out that said film was a faith-based cartoon and all those famous stars merely lent their voices? (Hahaha "Lent" their voices! Catholic joke!) I thought so.
As Patrick Bromley and I discussed on a recent podcast, King of Kings looks very interesting. It’s got that A-list of voice talent. It is the directorial debut for Korean animation wunderkind Jang Seong-Ho. It features Charles Dickens narrating the life of Christ.
WHOA THERE! Before you, like me, conclude that this must be the biggest popular culture non-sequitur of 2025, let me remind you that Dickens actually wrote a children’s book titled The Life of Our Lord. It was not one of his more popular works; I had never heard of it.King of Kings was produced by Angel Studios, which had the surprise hit of 2023 with Sound of Freedom, which grossed 250 million dollars. Angel Studios was also responsible for releasing episodes of The Chosen to theaters, which proved very popular. King of Kings has grossed almost 70 million dollars in one month. Clearly, there is a market for faith-based entertainment.
THE PLOT IN BRIEF: After interrupting a staged reading of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’ son Walter is tricked into listening to his father and mother tell him the story of Jesus Christ. Because this is an animated film, as Walter becomes more enmeshed in the narrative, he and his father are transported from the Dickens house to ancient Nazareth. They feast after the miracle of the loaves and fishes. It is the first time I’ve seen the Palm Sunday procession include a time-traveling Charles Dickens, his son, and their pet cat in the crowd. This sets the stage for other mind-numbing inconsistencies of tone and story.
At this point, the filmmakers lose sight of their frame story with a digression and some weird physical comedy during the famous Palm Sunday procession. Although in the main story, Charles Dickens is telling his son the story in his London study, we are shown the Dickens’ darn cat getting loose in the Jerusalem crowd and Jesus finding it and returning it to little Walter. WTF?This might be the most poorly-conceived children’s film ever made. The single best example of bad plotting might be the five-minute digression, ten minutes before the end of the film, where Dickens quickly consults a book from the shelf and explains original sin to a ten-year old. Then, the story can continue.
Another digression is illustrated in a completely different animation style than the "Old Testament Pixar" style of the main narrative. The digression features woodcuts brought to life with a strange, mechanical repetitiveness that resembles Terry Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python. You know... like in the Bible!
Because the film, at least at the beginning, is aimed at children, Greatest Hits abound. The film is heavy on the miracles: feeding the multitudes, walking on water, curing the sick, raising the dead. You know... stuff kids like! There is also that cartoon cat who fills much too much screen time with failed comic relief.Beyond the fact that the animation is beneath the level of what a precocious middle-schooler can do on her MacBook Pro, the character design is insane. These characters look like the puppety creations in Rankin/Bass animated specials from the 1960s: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Mad Monster Party, and The Year Without a Santa Claus. In fact, King Herod looks a lot like Heat Miser from the latter Rankin/Bass film, but with a beard. Only Heat Miser didn’t order all the babies in Bethlehem to be killed. It’s grotesquely incongruous.I was raised Catholic and as King of Kings progressed, I correctly predicted that the filmmakers would abandon any pretense of telling the story "to children" the closer we get to the end because 1) They LIVE for the “torture-y” parts of the story, or 2) They automatically tell the story the same way once they start, no matter who’s listening. Being scourged? Check. Crown of thorns? Check. Nailed to a cross? Check. Timmy, I know that you are only five, but are you getting this?
Dickens’ son Walter tries to offer Jesus some water as he carries his cross to Golgotha, but he trips and spills it. Is this tragic irony or batshit crazy comic relief? Watching a comical-looking, cartoon Roman centurion pounding nails through Jesus’ palms is… a disturbing mélange of tones.
I began to wonder if the voice talent were all doing some sort of court-ordered, church-sanctioned public service. My wife had a theory that the film’s producers offered them all suitcases full of cash and the chance to record their lines from their own houses in just a few hours. Of course, we cannot ignore the possibility that these esteemed actors believe in their religion and were trying to further the cause. That would be sort of heartwarming. I just wish the movie was better.PASS THE PLATE: During the end credits, the screen exhorted me to stay in my seat because there would be a SPECIAL MESSAGE coming up. This SPECIAL MESSAGE was surely something SPECIAL because the screen featured a count-down timer to it. When the credits ended, I was treated to a montage of children explaining why they enjoyed the film I had just seen (“I loved the cat!”) and wishing that MORE CHILDREN COULD SEE IT. Apparently, that’s where I come in. I was instructed to scan the QR code on the screen with my phone, which would take me to a site where I could pledge money that would be used to PURCHASE MOVIE TICKETS FOR THE LESS FORTUNATE!
This is the Catholicism that I remember from my youth: a confusing, vaguely terrifying religious parable... followed by a request for cash. Amen.

Announcing Junesploitation 2025! May 19, 2025
by Patrick Bromley

It's 30 days guaranteed to melt your brain.
This year marks our 15th year (!!!) as a site and our 12th year of Junesploitation, our annual celebration of exploitation and genre films. What started as a selfish excuse for me to spend a few weeks watching '70s and '80s grindhouse fare has exploded into a yearly tradition with many, many participants both on our site and on social media. Thank you for that!!
Most of you know the drill by now, but for those of you new to Junesploitation, here's how it works: each day of the month has its own theme, and you're supposed to watch a movie that ties into that theme. How you interpret the connection is entirely up to you, which means if you have no interest in exploitation or genre movies that's ok and you can still join in! If you're not into sword & sorcery movies, check out Now You See Me on June 5 Magic! day. Not a fan of Hong Kong Action? Check out M:I 2 on June 24. This month is supposed to be fun -- an excuse to watch movies every day and talk about them with one another. There are no "right" movies to watch. It's participating that gets you in the spirit, not watching a bunch of cheap, violent sleaze. That stuff is just a bonus.If you do like those kinds of movies, though, or if you're willing to give them a shot, it's super easy to participate in Junesploitation thanks to streaming services. Netflix isn't a ton of help, but Amazon Prime Video and Tubi have a deep library of titles and there are a couple of streaming platforms (like Shudder and Screambox) devoted to just these kinds of movies. A few other streamers have a number of titles you might want to check out this month. And while I rarely advocate watching movies on YouTube, there's a lot of cool and obscure stuff to be found there if you're willing to look. Stay tuned for our annual Junesploitation Primer for help on where to find some good titles, though by now most of you know where to look.Here is this year's schedule, as always featuring a several new categories and some returning favorites:
June 1 – Italian Crime!June 2 – Zombies!June 3 – David Carradine!June 4 – BlaxploitationJune 5 – Magic!June 6 – Giallo!June 7 – Kung Fu!June 8 – Heists!June 9 – Free Space!June 10 – Jess Franco!June 11 – ‘90s Action!June 12 – Cartoons!June 13 – Friday the 13th!June 14 – Free Space!June 15 – Revenge!June 16 – ‘80s Comedy!June 17 – Fulci!June 18 – Rock and Roll!June 19 – Free Space!June 20 – Exploitation Auteurs!June 21 – Westerns!June 22 – Teenagers!June 23 – New World Pictures!June 24 – Hong Kong Action!June 25 – Wings Hauser Tribute!June 26 – Eurosploitation!June 27 – Free Space!June 28 – Cannon!June 29 – ‘80s Action!June 30 – Italian Horror!
Thank you to our regular readers and commenters @ACasualListener and @Zillagord for suggesting some of this year's new categories! And, as always, thanks to our very own Doug for designing the calendar!!
It's almost June!

Announcing Junesploitation 2025! May 19, 2025
by Patrick Bromley

It's 30 days guaranteed to melt your brain.
This year marks our 15th year (!!!) as a site and our 12th year of Junesploitation, our annual celebration of exploitation and genre films. What started as a selfish excuse for me to spend a few weeks watching '70s and '80s grindhouse fare has exploded into a yearly tradition with many, many participants both on our site and on social media. Thank you for that!!
Most of you know the drill by now, but for those of you new to Junesploitation, here's how it works: each day of the month has its own theme, and you're supposed to watch a movie that ties into that theme. How you interpret the connection is entirely up to you, which means if you have no interest in exploitation or genre movies that's ok and you can still join in! If you're not into sword & sorcery movies, check out Now You See Me on June 5 Magic! day. Not a fan of Hong Kong Action? Check out M:I 2 on June 24. This month is supposed to be fun -- an excuse to watch movies every day and talk about them with one another. There are no "right" movies to watch. It's participating that gets you in the spirit, not watching a bunch of cheap, violent sleaze. That stuff is just a bonus.If you do like those kinds of movies, though, or if you're willing to give them a shot, it's super easy to participate in Junesploitation thanks to streaming services. Netflix isn't a ton of help, but Amazon Prime Video and Tubi have a deep library of titles and there are a couple of streaming platforms (like Shudder and Screambox) devoted to just these kinds of movies. A few other streamers have a number of titles you might want to check out this month. And while I rarely advocate watching movies on YouTube, there's a lot of cool and obscure stuff to be found there if you're willing to look. Stay tuned for our annual Junesploitation Primer for help on where to find some good titles, though by now most of you know where to look.Here is this year's schedule, as always featuring a several new categories and some returning favorites:
June 1 – Italian Crime!June 2 – Zombies!June 3 – David Carradine!June 4 – BlaxploitationJune 5 – Magic!June 6 – Giallo!June 7 – Kung Fu!June 8 – Heists!June 9 – Free Space!June 10 – Jess Franco!June 11 – ‘90s Action!June 12 – Cartoons!June 13 – Friday the 13th!June 14 – Free Space!June 15 – Revenge!June 16 – ‘80s Comedy!June 17 – Fulci!June 18 – Rock and Roll!June 19 – Free Space!June 20 – Exploitation Auteurs!June 21 – Westerns!June 22 – Teenagers!June 23 – New World Pictures!June 24 – Hong Kong Action!June 25 – Wings Hauser Tribute!June 26 – Eurosploitation!June 27 – Free Space!June 28 – Cannon!June 29 – ‘80s Action!June 30 – Italian Horror!
Thank you to our regular readers and commenters @ACasualListener and @Zillagord for suggesting some of this year's new categories! And, as always, thanks to our very own Doug for designing the calendar!!
It's almost June!

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