Mary Versus the Movies: Recent Episodes
Mary Jones
Sure, the 1980s were a great decade for film. But have you seen all of them? No, neither has Mary. In fact, some pretty big films passed her by, what with being in kindergarten at the time: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Moonstruck, My Neighbor Totoro... So it's time to fix that.
Artwork, opening and closing themes by Dennis Lingg Produced and edited by Mary Jones
A young Dubliner puts together a band of working class musicians to play American soul music in this shaggy film based on Roddy Doyle's novel.
We talk about music, what it means to be a cover band, questions raised by white singers trying to sound "black", and whether we've lost touch with making art for yourself.
Starring Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle, Dave Finnegan, Bronagh Gallagher, Félim Gormley, Glen Hansard, Johnny Murphy, Andrew Strong, and Colm Meany. Written by Roddy Doyle. Directed by Alan Parker.
Listen without ads when you join the Patreon: patreon.com/maryvsmovies
Beach Month ends with the loving parody of the genre, where Frankie and Annette rekindle their marriage, their son falls in with punks, and their daughter falls in love with a genial surf bum. It's packed with cameos from 1960s sitcom stars, musicians, and a whole lot of green-screened surfing.
Starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Devin Sladin, Lauri Loughlin, Tommy Hinkley, Connie Stevens, Don Adams, Bob Denver, and Pee-Wee Herman. Written by Peter Krikes, Steve Meerson, and Christopher Thompson. Directed by Lyndall Hobbs.
The classic Arthurian story is given a Pagan spin, where the adherents of the Goddess of the Old Religion--lead by Vivian, the Lady of the Lake, and her chosen successor Morgaine--are at odds with the growing Christian religion of Glastonbury and Camelot. Everyone hopes that Arthur will be the one true king to unite the two faiths into one nation, but, well, we all know how that turns out.
This tv miniseries adaptation of Marion Zimmer-Bradley's extremely popular novel is lusciously designed for its time, but the story falls apart in the second half, not only skipping large portions of the book, but rewriting it in ways that I found frustrating.
Starring Julianna Margulies, Anjelica Huston, Joan Allen, Samantha Mathis, Edward Atterton and Michael Vartan. Written by Gavin Scott from the book by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Directed by Uli Edel.
CW: contains a brief discussion of the child sexual abuse allegations against Bradley and her ex-husband.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Beach Month continues with no beach, no Frankie, and no Annette, but we do get a corpse in a creepy house who has to perform one last good deed in order to get into heaven, his evil attorney trying to cheat two young people out of a fortune, and the Bobby Fuller Four as the backing band. It's very silly, not remotely beachy, and a far cry from movies like Gidget or Beach Party, with the only continuity coming from the return of Eric Von Zipper and his biker gang. But it also has very strong Scooby-Doo vibes, so who are we to complain?
Starring Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley, Basil Rathbone, Nancy Sinatra, Aron Kinkade, Quinn O'Hara, Harvey Lembeck, and Boris Karloff. Written by Louis M. Heyward and Elwood Ullmann. Directed by Don Weis.
Listen without ads when you join the Patreon: patreon.com/maryvsmovies
Beach Month continues with one of the weirdest of the Frankie & Annette beach party movies: skydiving, scheming managers, bikers, murderous pool sharks, a silent film star, and a mermaid take over the beach and make things hard for the perennial lovebirds.
Starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Deborah Walley, Harvey Lembeck, John Ashley, Jody McCrea, Linda Evans, Don Rickles, Paul Lynde, Buster Keaton, and Earl Wilson. Written by Leo Townsend and William Asher. Directed by William Asher
We kick off a brief series on beach movies with a viewing of the original, the story of a tomboy who takes up surfing thanks to the help of the king of the beach bums, the Big Kahuna, while falling in love with his sidekick Moondoggie.
Starring Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson, and James Darren. Written by Gabrielle Union. Directed by Paul Wendkos.
It's the 4th of July, which means it's time for baseball, mom, and apple pie. We bring back Mary's sister to talk about one of her favorite movies (that Mary somehow avoided), a story about a bunch of boys playing neighborhood baseball in the summer of 1962. It's all rose-tinted glasses and lemonade, an exercise in nostalgia, and it's a pretty good movie.
Starring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna, Chauncey Leopardi, Marty York, Brandon Adams, Grant Gelt, Shane Obedzinski, Victor DiMattia, Denis Leary, Karen Allen, and James Earl Jones. Written by David Mickey Evans and Robert Gunter. Directed by David Mickey Evans
The newly-discovered Scrolls of Merlin have been stolen by a time-traveling MacBeth, so it's up to the Gargoyles to retrieve them. That's right, we check out the Disney fantasy series from the 1990s that combined Shakespeare, fairies, Celtic magic, evil billionaires, and cyberpunk aesthetics.
Gargoyles, season 2, episode 4: "A Lighthouse in the Sea of Time"
Starring Keith David, Ed Asner, Bill Fagerbakke, John Rhys Davies, and Paul Winfield. Written by Lydia Marano & Brynne Chandler Reaves. Directed by Frank Paur.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A mobster's widow is romantically pursued by both the FBI agent trailing her and the don who killed her husband. Oh, and the don's wife wants her dead. What's a girl to do?
Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, Dean Stockwell, Alec Baldwin, and Mercedes Ruehl. Written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns. Directed by Jonathan Demme.
Surprise guest Jon Solomon is here to talk about Elaine May's unfairly-maligned buddy comedy about two bumbling songwriters who end up at the center of a revolution in the fictional country of Ishtar. A bomb when it was released, it's now a well-liked cult film whose reputation has grown, and one of the funniest movies we've covered for the show.
Starring Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Isabella Adjani, and Charles Grodin. Written and directed by Elaine May. Songs by Paul Willams.
We went to see Masters of the Universe, the latest toy-turned-into-a-movie, and honestly had a good time, better than we expected. We briefly compare it to the 1987 film (see episode 79), as well as Flash Gordon, Arthurian romance, and more.
Starring Nicholas Galitzine, Jared Leto, Camila Mendes, Idris Elba, and Alison Brie. Directed by Travis Knight.
An engineer is laid off and becomes a stay-at-home dad, and hijinks--and gender--ensue. Not quite as off-putting as it could have been thanks to some very funny performances from Michael Keaton and Teri Garr, but it's still a hackneyed, reactionary premise.
Starring Michael Keaton, Teri Garr, Martin Mull, Ann Jillian. Written by John Hughes. Directed by Stan Dragoti.
A Greek artisan is commissioned by St. Luke and Joseph of Arimathea to make the Holy Grail, while fending off the the evil Simon Magus and the Emperor Nero. It's a very uneven film, sometimes boring, sometimes visually fascinating, and at least Jack Palance seems to be having fun. These days, it's best known as the movie Paul Newman apologized for making--which is a heck of a thing when it's your debut film.
Starring Paul Newman, Jack Palance, Virginia Mayo, Pier Angeli, and Lorne Greene. Written by Lesser Samuels. Directed by Victor Saville.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the pacifist princess with mystical powers fends off an evil empire in while trying to discover the way to return health to the land.
We bring on Scott Johnson to talk about one of his favorite films, as well as the deep well of influences on Miyazaki's ecological fantasy.
Starring (in the 2005 Disney re-dubbing) Alison Lohman, Patrick Stewart, Shia LaBeouf, Uma Thurman, Chris Sarandon, and Edward James Olmos. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, adapted from his manga of the same name.
Check out Scott's anime/manga and gaming convention, https://zenkaikon.com
Three short films about New Yorkers: the relationship of an artist and his assistant falls apart; a very young rich girl has adventures; a lawyer's relationship falls apart when his mother disappears during a magic show. It's an uneven collection, as anthology films often are: Scorsese's "Life Lessons" is a savage look at exploitation, Coppola's "Life Without Zoe" is a middling children's film, and Allen's "Oedipus Wrecks" is a pretty standard Woody Allen sketch.
Starring Nick Nolte, Rosanna Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Talia Shire, Mia Farrow, Julie Kavner, Mae Questel, and Woody Allen. Written by RIchard Price, Francis Ford Coppola, Sophia Coppola, and Woody Allen. Directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen.
An eccentric weatherman falls for a British journalist in the magical city of Los Angeles, where the people are beautiful, the muggers are polite, and the sun is always shining.
Starring Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant, Richard E. Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Marliu Henner. Written by Steve Martin. Directed by Mick Jackson.
Pittsburgh's basketball team is the worst in the league, so their 14-year-old towel-boy goes to an astrologer and convinces the team to only have players who are Pisces, while twin brothers battle over the fate of the team.
Starring Julius "Dr. J." Irving, James Bond III, Jonathan Winters, Meadowlark Lemon, Stockard Channing, Jack Kehoe, and Harry Shearer. Written by Jaison Starkes and Edmond Stevens. Directed by Gilbert Moses.
We return to the 1950s tv series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot with two episodes: Episode 3, "The Queen's Knight", which takes some inspiration from Chretien de Troyes' Lancelot, le Chevalier de la charrette as well as Malory's Le Morte Darthur, with Guinevere abducted by Mordred and Lancelot disguising himself as a peasant driving a cart in order to rescue her.
Episode 20, "Maid of Somerset", where the people of Cheddar, famed for its cheese, are subjected to the cruel king Meliot, who sells his people into slavery, until Lancelot conspires with the peasants to conduct an uprising against the king.
Both episodes are interesting in how they utilize Arthurian legend in order to tell more egalitarian stories, with common people frequently pointing out that all these knights and kings never have to deal with the pains and humiliations they live under.
Starring William Russell, Cyril Smith, Bruce Seton, Jane Hylton, and Patricia Kneale. Written by Leslie Poynton (episode 3); Selwyn Jepson (episode 20). Directed by Ralph Smart; Bernard Knowles.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
We welcome Canadian film critic and journalist Stephen Cooke to the show to talk about indie director Hal Hartley's debute film, the story of a misanthropic girl who falls in love with a mysterious ex-con in the lower-middle-class suburbs of Long Island.
Starring Adrienne Shelly, Robert Burke, Christopher Cooke, and Edie Falco. Written and directed by Hal Hartley.
An FBI criminal profiler is on the trail of a serial killer, and enlists the help of a dangerous psychopath to track him down. No, it's not Silence of the Lambs, it's Michael Mann's thriller based on the Thomas Harris book The Red Dragon, the first work to introduce us to the infamous Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lector.
Starring William Petersen, Tom Noonan, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, and Dennis Farina. Written and directed by Michael Mann.
An American oil company offers to buy a Scottish village, but things don't go as planned in this comedic fairy tale about lonlieness, community, and the wonders of the natural world.
Starring Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Peter Capaldi, Fulton Mackay, and Burt Lancaster. Written and directed by Bill Forsyth.
Grab the Visine and Dexedrine, folks, it's showtime! We welcome writer, actress, and comedian Julie Klausner to the show to discuss Bob Fosse's autobiographical exploration of death, sex, and creative obsession. We talk about musicals, the art of editing, and how charisma lets you get away with murder.
Starring Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Leland Palmer, Cliff Gorman, and Ben Vereen. Written by Robert Alan Aurthur and Bob Fosse. Directed by Bob Fosse.
Francis Ford Coppola's epic about the Vietnam War draws as much from J.G. Frazer's The Golden Bough and Jessie Weston's landmark Arthurian study From Ritual to Romance as it does from Joseph Conrad's novel of African colonialism Heart of Darkness. It's a grail quest with no grail, a pilgrimage with no relief. It's the end of kings, and the end of the world.
Starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburn, and Dennis Hopper. Written by John Milius. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Never mess with the money.
Newscaster Howard Beale has been fired from television, but not before he has a mental breakdown live on-air. What could be better for ratings? One of the great satires of the 1970s is a film that meant a lot to our host Mary, but co-host Dennis has never seen before, so what better to cover for Dennis Versus the Movies month?
Starring: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty, and Beatrice Straight. Written by Paddy Chayefsky. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
A bullied boy finds a magic book, bringing him into a fantastical world under threat of annihilation. Dennis Vs the Movies month continues with the movie that scarred millions of millennials.
Starring Barret Oliver, Noah Hathaway, Tami Stronach, and Alan Oppenheimer. Written by Wolfgang Petersen and Herman Weigel. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen.
The story of a young Russian-Jewish mouse who emigrates to America, is separated from his family, and has to find his way in 1880s New York City is a lushly-animated, sometimes grim story about assimilation, discimination, and the promises the United States makes to the world and consistenty violates.
Starring Cathianne Blore, Dom DeLuise, John Finnegan, Phillip Glasser, Amy Green, Madeline Kahn, Pat Musick, Nehemiah Persoff, and Christopher Plummer. Written by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss. Directed by Don Bluth.
Dennis Versus the Movies month kicks off with a favorite from Mary's childhood, the Philadelphia-set romantic comedy about a department-store window-dresser and the five-thousand-year-old Egyptian mummy spends her days as mannequin and nights as Kim Cattrall. Forget the haters, it's Pygmalion on the Schuykill.
Starring Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, James Spader, Meshach Taylor, G. W. Baily, and Estelle Getty. Written by Edward Rugoff and Michael Gottlieb. Directed by Michael Gottlieb.
We're back watching James Bond, this time teaming up with a sexy Russian spy to take down a deranged Swedish shipping magnate who wants to blow up the world so that he can live under the sea. Also, we get the first appearance of the henchman Jaws. Honestly, it's pretty fun, and half the movie was filmed in Egypt.
Starring Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curt Jurgens, and Richard Kiel. Written by Christopher Wood, Richard Maibaum, and Tom Manciewicz. DIrected by Lewis Gilbert.
The story of the Jamaican bobslead team is a family-friendly comedy that hits all the hoary old sports movie underdog beats. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, though it means they have to completely fictionalize an historical event. Thankfully, it also has John Candy.
Starring Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewis, Malik Youba, and John Candy. Written by Lynn Siefert, Tommy Swerdlow, and Michael Goldberg. Directed by Jon Turteltaub.
It's sports! It's animals! It's animation! It's celebrity voices! It's... a weird riff on Lost Horizon and I guess Saturday Night Fever with an alligator? It's Animalypics! From the creator of Tron! And hosted by a turtle who sounds like Henry Kissinger! And music from 10cc! I'm sure it made sense in 1980.
Starring Michael Fremer, Gilda Radner, Billy Crystal, and Harry Shearer. Written by Steven Lisberger, Michael Fremer, and Roger Allers. Directed by Steven Lisberger. Music by Graham Gouldman
A young man loses his father and home, is forced to work for a land baron, falls in love with his boss's daughter, and captures a rogue horse in this drama based on an Australian ballad. It's corny as a paperback romance, and has more horses than a twelve-year-old girl's notebook.
We also have my sister Anne on to talk a bit about horses.
Starring Tom Burlinson, Kirk Douglas, Sigrid Thornton, Jack Thompson, and Chris Haywood. Written by John Dixon and Fred Cullen from Banjo Paterson's poem. Directed by George T. Miller.
A bland office drone has an affair with his married coworker and becomes obsessed with her, while juggling his suicidal mother and unemployed best friend; did we mention it's a comedy?
Starring John Heard, Mary Beth Hurt, Peter Riegert, Kenneth McMillan, and Gloria Grahame. Written and directed by Joan Micklin Silver
A silent film of an opera sounds like a joke, but no, it's quite real--and honestly pretty disjointed and dull, playing more like highlights of Wagner's opera about the Holy Grail than a film in its own right. We also discuss Catholic theology, transubstantiation, incels, and Happy Days.
Starring Vitale Di Stefano, Mario Bonnard, Mary Cleo Tarlarini, and Maria Caserini. Directed by Mario Caserini.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
An American journalist goes missing during the 1973 Chilean coup, and his family naively expects the U.S. government to help recover him, not realizing that they're behind the coup. Based on a true story.
Starring Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, John Shea, Melanie Mayron, and David Clennon. Written by Costa-Gavras and Donald E. Stewart. Directed by Costa-Gavras.
An Acid Western about a 19th century American mercenary overthrowing the government of Nicaragua is one of the angriest farces ever committed to film, reflecting on not only the historical attrocities, but also the then on-going attrocities tied to the U.S. Iran-Contra scandals. It's the film that killed director Alex Cox's chances at a mainstream career, but what a way to go.
Starring Ed Harris, Richard Masur, René Auberjonois, Peter Boyle, Miguel Sandoval, and Marlee Matlin. Written by Rudy Wurlitzer. Directed by Alex Cox. Music by Joe Strummer.
We finally welcome our special guest Josh Seybert to talk about a Czech comedy based on a gothic Jules Verne novel about a singing count, his missing girlfriend, and a strange castle in Transylvania.
We discuss language, world cinema, slapstick comedy, and why subtitles aren't a big deal.
Josh is the host of several podcast projects, including Empathy at the Apocalypse with Andy Mascola, and the upcoming Uncle Morty Show.
https://screamingatclouds.libsyn.com/
Starring Michal Dočolomanský, Evelyna Steimarová, Rudolf Hrušínský, Vlastimil Brodský, and Miloš Kopecký, Written by Oldřich Lipský and Jiří Brdečka. Directed by Oldřich Lipský
Kicking off 2026 with an episode about Martin Scorsese's attempt at a big MGM-style movie: a dark post-war musical about a married pair of jazz performers from the team that wrote Cabaret and starring Liza Minnelli. Sounds like a dream come true for film lovers, right? The result is a flawed film that we ended up liking anyway.
Starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli. Written by Earl Mac Rauch and Mardik Martin. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Music by Josh Kander and Fred Ebb.
Once again we visit the a film based on the 14th century, Middle English, Christmas-set poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and walk away somewhat disappointed. Is Mary expecting too much? Why is she so obsessed with this poem? Will there ever be a version that satisfies her?
Starring Murray Head, Ciaran Madden, Nigel Green, Anthony Sharp, Robert Hardy, Tony Steedman, and Ronald Lacy. Written by Philip M. Breen and Stephen Weeks. Directed by Stephen Weeks.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A young Brooklyn artist juggles her multiple relationships in this romantic comedy, Spike Lee's first feature film, giving sex the Rashomon treatment.
CW: rape/sexual assault is discussed
Starring Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks, John Canada Terrell, Spike Lee, Raye Dowell. Written and directed by Spike Lee
A woman framed for murder, a yuppie lawyer with a socialite fiance, and a mountain lion loose in Manhattan cause havoc in a screwball comedy that maybe needed a couple of rewrites, but ultimately is some pretty mindless fun.
Starring Madonn and Griffin Dunne. Written by Andrew Smith and Ken Finkleman. Directed by James Foley.
Let's celebrate Thanksgiving 1970s-style, by watching Martin Scorsese's concert documentary of the last performance by The Band (or at least the Band with Robbie Robertson still part of it). It's not just a concert, of course--it's a meditation on the end of the 1960s counterculture, bookending Scorsese's earlier work in Woodstock.
We also have an interview with Mary's mother about cinematography, editing, and keeping up with music when you age out of youth culture.
Starring Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, The Staples, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Hawkins, Ringo Starr, Ron Wood. Directed by Martin Scorsese.
This is a reposting of a recent episode without any copyright issues, to get past YouTube's blocker.
It's 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma, it's Greasers versus Soc's, it's poor versus rich, it's murder and poetry, and it's a ton of future stars.
We welcome back my sister Anne Jones to talk about her favorite movie.
Starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, and Leif Garrett. Written by Kathleen Rowell from S.E. Hinton's novel. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
This is a reposting of a recent episode without any copyright issues, to get past YouTube's blocker.
We revisit the BBC fantasy show Merlin, hoping to enjoy it more than the pilot--and while the dynamic between Merlin and Arthur is certainly better than before, the rest of the show leaves us frustrated, not just with ignoring wide swathes of Arthurian elements, but for indulging in one of the worst sins of 21st century storytelling: the hidden emotional trauma of the nerd and his absentee father.
That's right, we're cranky, and you're all gonna be mad at us again.
Merlin, season 2, episode 13: "The Last Dragonlord".
Starring Colin Morgan, Bradley James, John Hurt, Richard Wilson, and John Lynch. Written by Julian Jones. Directed by Jeremy Webb.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Let's celebrate Thanksgiving 1970s-style, by watching Martin Scorsese's concert documentary of the last performance by The Band (or at least the Band with Robbie Robertson still part of it). It's not just a concert, of course--it's a meditation on the end of the 1960s counterculture, bookending Scorsese's earlier work in Woodstock.
We also have an interview with Mary's mother about cinematography, editing, and keeping up with music when you age out of youth culture.
Starring Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, The Staples, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Hawkins, Ringo Starr, Ron Wood. Directed by Martin Scorsese.
It's 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma, it's Greasers versus Soches, it's poor versus rich, it's murder and poetry, and it's a ton of future stars.
We welcome back my sister Anne Jones to talk about her favorite movie.
Starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, and Leif Garrett. Written by Kathleen Rowell from S.E. Hinton's novel. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Students at a prestigious military academy hold an insurrection when told the school will close. Gotta be honest, I never loved my high school that much.
Starring Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, Giancarlo Esposito, and George C. Scott. Written by Darryl Ponicsan and Robert Mark Kamen. Directed by Harold Becker.
Florida seniors discover the fountain of youth--an abandoned pool full of alien cocoons from Atlantis. Naturally, they drain the aliens of their life force in order to save money on Viagra. Hey, sometimes humans are the real monsters.
Starring Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Brian Dennehy, Jack Gilford, Steve Guttenberg, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Gwen Verdon, Herta Ware, and Tahnee Welch. Written by Tom Benedek. Directed by Ron Howard.
At first glance, the sequel to the zombie movie 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later is not an obvious pick for a podcast about Arthurian movies. However, after watching a few minutes, it's fairly evident that the movie isn't just a commentary on post-Brexit Britain, the weaponization of nostalgia, and the dangers of Little Englanders, it's playing with all of British history, from the end of its place as part of the Roman Empire--an end that leads to the creation of the Arthurian legend--to the Viking incursions, to the Henry V, the rise and fall of the British Empire, World War II, and the decrepit ruling class that protected monsters like Jimmy Savile and Prince Andrew. Beyond that, it's a meditation on death and compassion, one which asks us to, as the Latin phrase goes, memento mori.
Starring Alfie Williams, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes, Edvin Rydig, Jack O'Connell, and Chi Lewis-Parry. Written by Alex Garland. Directed by Danny Boyle.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Mary and Dennis are tied up with their dayjobs this week, so as a Halloween treat, friend and fellow podcaster Josh Seybert asked his Uncle Morty to step into the breach with a review of Cecelia Condit's horror musical short Possibly In Michigan.
Starring Jill Sands, Bill Blume, and Karen Skladany. Written and directed by Cecelia Condit.
Check out Josh's many projects at https://screamingatclouds.libsyn.com and his show with Andy Mascola, Empathy at the Apocalypse: https://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/8fee42d4-fe5b-4500-9db1-767a4e25b9f8
A carnival blows into a sleepy town, promising to fulfill everyone's desires--but wishes always come with a catch. Can young Will and Jack resist temptation? Can Will's father save them before it's too late? And will the town be free of Mr. Dark and his carnival before the storms come and wipe everything away? Ray Bradbury's dark fantasy of Americana is a little let down in the directing, but Robards and Price's performances ground the battle between good and evil.
Starring Jason Robards, Jonathan Price, Dianne Ladd, Pam Grier, Vidal Peterson, and Shawn Carson. Written by Ray Bradbury. Directed by Jack Clayton.
An immortal Lancelot, living in 1986, is attacked by a gang of punks, kidnapped by Morgan Le Fay, and forced by a mad Merlin to battle a magic suit of armor in a desperate attempt to bring back Camelot--something Old Man Lancelot really doesn't want.
We visit the 1980s incarnation of The Twilight Zone with this adaptation of a Roger Zelazny short story, which originally aired April 11, 1986.
Starring Richard Kiley, Jenny Agutter, Norman Lloyd, and John Cameron Mitchell. Written by George R. R. Martin based on the story by Roger Zelazny. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
What if Arthur was a bloke? You know, a regular street tough, a geezer, a guy up from the harsh streets of Londinium, who defeats an evil wizard-king with his merry band of criminals? Then you'd have Guy Ritchie's version of the Arthurian story. And honestly? It's not that bad. Don't get me wrong, it's not great–the story is silly, the CGI looks terrible, and there are parts that drag quite a lot. But it has Jude Law as the evil King Vortigern, swishing his way through the story, and Charlie Hunnam is pretty affable as a guy who goes from bouncer to king.
Starring Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Astrid Bergès-Frisby, Djimon Hounsou, Eric Bana, Aidan Gillen, Tom Wu, and Neil Maskell. Written by Joby Harold and Guy Ritchie. Directed by Guy Ritchie.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
The only survivor of a suicide cult wakes up in a mental institution after fifteen years in a coma, only to be haunted by the ghost of her former leader, urging her to finish the deed. Is this real? Or is she being manipulated by the hospital?
Writer and relationships expert Alana Phelan is back with us to talk about a movie she was terrified by as a kid. Is it as scary as she remembers? Or is it all kind of silly nonsense?
Starring Jennifer Rubin, Bruce Abbott, E.G. Daily, Dean Cameron, Harris Yulin, and Richard Lynch. Written by Andrew Fleming and Steven E. de Souza. Directed by Andrew Fleming.
In the extended cut on Patreon, we also talk about mental health issues, Steve from Blues Clues, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (yes, again), and Ray Bradbury.
Website: http://www.maryvsmovies.com
A group of girls head to an elderly aunt's haunted house for the summer and are quickly consummed by the past. This cult classic is one of the strangest films we've covered in the show, full of wild video effects and a guy who turns into a pile of bananas. It rocks.
Starring Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Ai Matubara, Kumiko Oba, Mieko Sato, Eriko Tanaka, Masayo Miyako, and Yōko Minamida. Written by Chiho Katsura. Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
The new next door neighbor is a vampire who wants your girlfriend. Naturally, the first thing you do is enlist a local tv host to fight him. It's a very meta comedy, a Scream before there was Scream.
Starring Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowell, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, Stephen Geoffreys, and Jonathan Stark. Written and directed by Tom Holland.
We’re subjected to a reboot of the Hellboy franchise, which amps up the Arthurian content–Hellboy doesn’t just battle a reanimated Vivian/Nimue, the sorceress who traditionally imprisoned Merlin, but it turns out Hellboy is descended of King Arthur and the only person who can wield Excalibur. But if Hellboy does so, he might give over to his demonic nature and initiate the apocalypse.
Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, this movie absolutely sucks. Just a real turd. Flat, dull, and incoherent. So much wasted potential.
Starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, and Danie Dae Kim . Written by Andrew Cosby. Directed by Neil Marshall.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A movie about a bitter divorce and custody battle might win best picture, but it doesn't entirely win us over, no matter how good Meryl Streep's peformance is. A reactionary film that swept the Oscars? Quelle surprise, Hollywood.
Starring Dustin Hoffmann, Meryl Streep, Justin Henry, and Jane Alexander. Written and directed by Robert Benton.
A young prince, with his magic weapon called the Glaive, gathers a bandit army to rescue his princess from a beast from the stars. Sure, it's generic 1980s fantasy, but it's better-looking than most from that era, and who doesn't want to throw a deadly starfish?
Starring Ken Marshall, Lysette Anthony, Freddie Jones, Francesca Annis, Alun Armstrong, Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane. Written by Stanford Sherman. Directed by Peter Yates.
Molly Ringwald is her own fairy godmother, a Cinderella stuck in a love triangle between her best friend and a wealthy classmate, in this teen dramady from John Hughes. Did we like it? More than we thought, but not without some reservations. But hey, it has a killer soundtrack, a very sleazy James Spader, and Annie Potts in a beehive wig.
Starring Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Andrew McCarthy, Annie Potts, Harry Dean Stanton, and James Spader. Written by John Hughes. Directed by Howard Deutch.
It's our 200th episode! To celebrate, we recorded live in Philadelphia with an audience.
In a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, teenage surf nazis rule the beaches, causing havoc for the city, until one elderly mother, her son murdered by the gang, goes on a campaign of revenge.
Starring Gail Neely, Barry Brenner, Robert Harden, and Tom Demenkoff. Written by Jon Ayre. Directed by Peter George
Thanks again to everyone who came out to the show at Space 1026, and to Bruce Bohri for producing it.
Subscribers to the Patreon can also see the full video of the show.
http://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies
A scumbag thief stumbles across a monster, a detective chases a neo-Aztec cult, and New York City is terrorized by a giant naked bird in a surprisingly good and bloody horror movie.
Starring Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, David Carridine, and Richard Roundtree. Written and directed by Larry Cohen.
The 1960s fly by, with drag races and bravado giving way to war and suburban malaise in this sequel to George Lucas's groundbreaking American Grafitti. The result is a better, sadder film than the expected cash-grab.
Starring Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Paul Le Mat, Candy Clark, Charles Martin Smith, Scott Glenn, and Anna Bjorn. Written and directed by Bill L. Norton.
Rick Wakeman's infamous prog rock ballet was captured on video tape, and thank God. While the majority of incidents have been edited out--one skater losing her top, another unable to pull the sword from the stone, still another being a knight who has to fall on his own sword due to a lack of choreography--there's still plenty of baffling choices being backed here by Wakemans' attempt at a modern rock show about the legendary Once and Future King.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Hey! It's Jaws! And it's 3D! And it's not great! And it doesn't make me want to go to Sea World! But hey, it's got sharks, so I guess that's something.
Starring Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale, Louis Gossett Jr., and Lea Thompson. Written by Richard Matheson (?) and Carl Gottlieb. Directed by Joe Alves.
A silent drifter is rescued by his brother, and attempts to reestablish his relationships with his son and ex-wife in this stark modern Western that bounces between the American southwest, modern Los Angeles, and Houston.
Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nastassja Kinski, Aurore Clement, and Hunter Carson. Written by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson. Directed by Wim Wenders.
Cautiously excited to see Superman (2025), we decided to check out part of the extended Supes cinematic universe with a film built around his cousin, Kara Zor-El, a.k.a. Supergirl. Not the worst superhero movie we've seen, but maybe one of the creepiest, what with all the adults making out with high school girls.
Starring Faye Dunaway, Helen Slater, Peter O'Toole, Brenda Vaccaro and Peter Cook. Written by David Odell. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc.
An overworked air traffic controller just wants to take a long vacation down the shore with his family? What could go wrong? Well, everything, of course. And then for some reason a boat race happens.
Starring John Candy, Richard Crenna, Rip Torn, Karen Austin, Kerri Green, John Larroquette, and Joey Lawrence. Written by Mark Reisman and Jeremy Stevens. Directed by Carl Reiner.
Nick Chapman is a film student who suddenly hits it big in Hollywood, and finds out how much of a curse that is. The directorial debut of Christopher Guest is a sly satire of filmmaking that has a surprisingly sweet center.
Starring Keving Bacon, Jennifer Jason Leigh, J. T. Walsh, and Michael McKean. Written by Christopher Guest, Michal McKean, and Michal Varhol. Directed by Christopher Guest.
A man turns his farm into a baseball diamond inhabited by the ghosts of disgraced ballplayers in what might be the most boomer dad film ever made.
Starring Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta, James Earl Jones, Amy Madigan, Burt Lancaster, and Timothy Busfield. Written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson.
Sidney is a washed-up playwrite; Myra is his rich and sickly wife; Clifford is his younger lover and protégé. Let's just say they're not a happy trouple in this comedy-thriller adapted from the long-running stage play.
Starring Michael Caine, Dyan Cannon, and Christopher Reeve. Written by Ira Levin and Jay Presson Allen. Directed by Sidney Lumet.
Four directors remake several classic Twilight Zone episodes, as well adding as their own material. Does it work? Do anthology films work? Can this movie escape the tragedy that occured during production? Is this a movie, or just tv on a big screen?
Starring Dan Ackroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, Scatman Crothers, Kathleen Quinlan, and John Lithgow. Oh, and Dick Miller. Directed by John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller. Written by John Landis, Richard Matheson, Melissa Mathison, George Clayton Johnson, Jerome Bixby, and Rod Serling.
Aliens crash-land in the American southwest, and it's a race between NASA and the CIA over whether the truth is ever exposed. Also, it's a race between my attention and my eyelids--this is an incredibly soporific film.
Starring Darren McGavin, Robert Vaughn, Gary Collins, James Hampton and Pamela Bellwood. Written by Thomas C. Chapman and James L. Conway. Directed by James L. Conway
A young blacksmith joins King Arthur's court and hopes to win the hand of the fair Linet, but first he must defeat Vikings, Druids, the villainous Sir Palamedies, King Mark, and a very burly guy in a turban. If it didn't feature brownface and a far-too-old Alan Ladd in the title role, it might have been a pretty good movie.
Starring Alan Ladd, Patricia Medina, Peter Cushing, Patrick Troughton, Anthony Bushell, and Harry Andrews. Directed by Tay Garnett. Written by Alec Coppel, Bryan Forbes, and Dennis O'Keefe.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
It's the end of the world as we know it, and the living envy the dead. The threads of civilization are destroyed in a nuclear war, and Britain is thrust into a new dark age. And we don't even get to have any of the fun stuff like barbarians on motorcycles.
Starring Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, Steve Halliwell, and Jane Hazelgrove. Written by Barry Hines. Directed by Mick Jackson.
A manicurist from The Valley dumps her cheating doctor fiance for a trio of hairy aliens in this campy sci-fi musical comedy that's better than its reputation.
Starring Geena Davis, Julie Brown, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans, Jim Carrey, and Charles Rocket. Written by Julie Brown, Charley Coffey, and Terrence E. McNally. Directed by Julien Temple.
Newsboys of the streets unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
We welcome back Anne Jones to talk about one of her favorite movies, Newsies, the story of the 1899 New York City newsboys strike, which Mary didn't know was a Disney musical. Life is full of surprises.
Starring Christian Bale, Bill Pullman, Robert Duval, and Ann Margaret. Written by Bob Tzudiker and Noni White. Directed by Kenny Ortega. Music by Alan Menkin, lyrics by J. A. C. Redford.
Support the Philadelphia Avengers: https://www.instagram.com/phillyavengers/
Steve Martin is a lawyer. Lily Thomlin is dead. Can two souls inhabit one body without driving each other crazy? We go back to the Steve Martin/Carl Reiner well for this screwball comedy about living your best life, and have a great time doing it.
Starring Steve Martin, Lily Thomlin, Victoria Tennant, Richard Libertini, and Dana Elcar. Written by Phil Alden Robinson. Directed by Carl Reiner.
We delve into some prime late 20th century nonsense when we watch a two-part episode of MacGyver, wherein our mulleted hero is conked on the head and wakes up in Camelot, uncovers an assassination plot against King Arthur, trades tips with Merlin, rescue a fair maiden, and does battle against Queen Morganna.
Starring Richard Dean Anderson, Dana Elcar, Time Winters, Christopher Collet, Christopher Neame, Robin Strasser, and Colm Meany. Written by John Considine. Directed by Michael Vejar.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Opera-loving director wants to make a movie about an opera-loving rubber baron who hauls a boat over a mountain in order to bring music to the jungle, and so he hauls an actual boat over a mountain. The lines between life and art, work and exploitation, madness and determination blur together in this documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo.
Starring Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Jason Robards. Directed by Les Blank. Narrated by Michael Goodwin.
An American rock star gets caught up in intrigue in Cold War East Germany. Or is it World War II? Nazis, Communists, whatever, right guys? Anyway, from the guys who made Airplane, it's "what if Elvis made a spy movie", and it's pretty good.
Starring Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge, Omar Sharif, Michael Gough, Jeremy Kemp, and one very odd cameo from Peter Cushing. Written by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Martyn Burke. Directed by Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker.
A pig-headed pilot takes on air pirates and fascists while regaining his humanity in this adventure from Hayao Miyazaki. Set in 1929, it's a story of love, honor, pacifism, and resistance.
For this, we watched the English dub from 2005; I know, I know, subs over dubs, but so it goes.
Starring (in the dub) Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers, and Brad Garrett. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Look, I know it sounds crazy, but Star Wars has all kinds of Arthurian elements: an orphan boy with a secret destiny; a magic sword; a crazy magician; a princess who needs rescuing; and a big bad guy. Obviously the original film was influenced by all sorts of things (The Hidden Fortress; Lawrence of Arabia; Dune; even Lord of the Rings) but it’s no surprise that the stories of King Arthur are a pretty prominent influence on the original movie about a farm boy who wants to be a hero, takes up with a space-wizard and a pirate, and helps bring down an evil empire.
Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, and James Earl Jones. Written and directed by George Lucas.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Toys come to life and encounter a hallucinating camel, a sentient taffy pit that eats itself, and a paranoid king who only grows big when torturing and humiliating other people. You know, a kids movie.
"Dennis Versus the Movies" month comes to an end with a really, really strange movie that Mary was obsessed with as a kid.
Starring Didi Conn, Mark Baker, Claire Williams, George S. Irving, Fred Stuthman, and Joe Silver. Written by Patricia Thackray and Mark Wilk. Directed by Richard Williams. Music by Joe Raposo.
"Dennis versus the Movies" continues as we welcome back to the show puppeteer and children's entertainer Zach Woliner to talk about the third Muppets movie, an homage to the Broadway musical films of the 1930s. The Muppets head to Manhattan with stars in their eyes and a dream of Broadway stardom, only to break apart, Kermit to get amnesia, and Miss Piggy to face down a New York full of muggers, cruel bosses, and sexual harrassment. It's a family film.
Starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, Juliana Donald, Lonny Price, Louis Zorich, Dabney Coleman, and Art Carney. Written by Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses. Directed by Frank Oz
An ex-firefighter stuck in a dead-end job is offered a chance to live it up for a week if he jumps in a volcano and dies so a rich man can steal some natural resources from a tropical island. Well, who wouldn't say yes to that?
Dennis Vs the Movies month continues, featuring an interview with Mary's mom!
Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Lloyd Bridges, Abe Vigoda, Robert Stack, Ossie Davis, Dan Hedaya, Amanda Plummer, and Nathan Lane. Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley.
Ray just wants a peaceful staycation--why do his neighbors have to be so weird? We kick off Dennis Vs. the Movies Month with one of Mary's favorite movies from her childhood.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Henry Gibson, Bruce Dern, Rick Ducommun, Corey Feldman, Brother Theodore, Wendy Schaal, and Carrie Fischer. Written by Dana Olsen. Directed by Joe Dante.
Robot security guards go rogue and start killing people at the mall. Don't worry, it's 2025, all our malls are dead already, and I'm sure our robot security guards will treat us well.
Starring Kelli Maroney, Tony O'Dell, John Terlesky, Russell Todd, and Barbara Crampton. Written by Jim Wynorski and Steve Mitchell. Directed by Jim Wynorski
A young woman coming of age in a seaside town challenges the stuffy sexual mores and hypocrisy of post-war Britain in this dramedy from the writer of Mona Lisa.
Starring Emily Lloyd, Tom Bell, Geoffrey Hutchings, and Pat Heywood. Written and directed by David Leland.
A standard college melodrama makes a hard-right turn into an anti-abortion screed in a move that's almost as bizarre as Kirk Cameron's horrible Southern accent.
We welcome back Alana Phelan to the show with a movie she really loved as a kid, but viewing it as an adult, a few things suddenly stand out.
Starring Kirk Cameron, Jamie Gertz, Roy Scheider, and Tim Quill. Written and directed by Douglass Day Stewart.
Content warning: this episode discusses rape, abortion, and general sexual topics.
The Indiegogo link to Alana and Kevin's book:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/for-hire-the-price-of-fame/#/
A Russian tank unit is lost during the Soviet-Afghan war, leading to a breakdown in order, attempted mutiny, and dessertion to the Mujahideen. Part Moby Dick, part Lawrence of Arabia, and a little bit Rambo, it's a meditation on war, revenge, and mercy.
Starring George Dzundza, Jason Patric, Steven Bauer, Stephen Baldwin, Erick Avari, and Don Harvey. Written by William Mastrosimone. Directed by Kevin Reynolds
We took a look at a British tv series from the 1950s, dramatising the Arthurian story in a high-romance fashion. Believe it or not, it’s pretty good! Starring William Russell–who later played “Ian” on Doctor Who–it’s a fairly faithful rendering of the story, with Lancelot as an outsider who comes to Arthur’s court, Gawain as his rival, a belligerent Kay, and a Merlin who is part magician, part con-man. Lancelot isn’t just the best of knights here, he’s also a champion of underdogs, defying the more hierarchical standards of Camelot–it’s no surprise to find out that several of the writers for the show were Americans who were blacklisted during the Red Scare. Once again, the Arthurian world is used as a playground for utopian politics, not unlike Twain’s Connecticut Yankee and T.H. White’s Once and Future King.
Starring William Russell, Cyril Smith, Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Robert Scroggins, and Jane Hylton. With various writers and directors depending on the episode.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
James Bond goes up against Hugo Drax, a billionaire with a private space rocket company who's secretly a eugenicist, plotting to kill everyone on earth and replace them with his idea of a master race who lives in space. I don't know why this sounds so familiar. Also, Jaws the Henchman shows up and goes through so many near-deaths, you'd think he was fighting Bugs Bunny.
Starring Roger Moore, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel, Lois Chiles, and Corrine Clery. Written by Christopher Wood from Ian Fleming's novel. Directed by Lewish Gilbert.
David Lynch's first film is an exploration of the fear of fatherhood, set against a grim industrial backdrop, featuring surreal, nightmarish imagry that would reoccur throughout his career. An influential, landmark American film of the midnight movie scene, and ultimately, one hell of a bad trip.
Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, and Robert Fisk. Written and directed by David Lynch.
Nazis hiding in South America have been cloning Hitler, and one researcher is crossing the globe, trying to stop their plans to resurrect the Third Reich. A thriller from the writer of Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives that culimates in two very old men slapfighting over the future.
Starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Steve Guttenberg, Uta Hagen, and Jeremy Black. Written by Ira Levin and Heywood Gould. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.
Nebbish Seymour Krelborn finds an extraterrestrial plant that offers him everything he wants—fame, money, the love of his coworker Audrey—in return for fresh human blood. What started as a 1960 Roger Corman schlockfest is turned into a campy musical from the guys who brought us… The Little Mermaid? Wait, really?
Starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin, and Bill Murray. Written by Howard Ashman. Music by Alan Menkin. Directed by Frank Oz
Here it is, John Boorman's epic retelling of King Arthur's conception, Camelot, the Holy Grail, and his final betrayal by his own son. It's mostly Thomas Malory's 15th century romance Le Morte Darthur, mashed up with bits of Jessie Weston's 1920 book, the Grail study "From Ritual to Romance" and with a heavy dollop of 1960s Neopaganism. It has plenty of sex, violence, swords, and sorcery to grab the attention of any young teen watching HBO in the 1980s, and enough Before They Were Stars for the rest of us.
Starring Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nichol Williamson, Nicholas Clay, Cherie Lunghi, Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Stewart, Paul Geoffrey, Robert Addie, and Liam Neeson. Written and directed by John Boorman.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
It's the musical version of A Christmas Carol, featuring one of the more surprising diss tracks in all musical cinema. Join us as we dissect Dickens' classic one more time.
Starring Albert Finney, Alec Guinness, Edith Evans, Kenneth Moore, and Laurence Naismith. Directed by Ronald Neame. Written and with music by Leslie Bricusse.
The gangs of New York come together for a conclave, only for the charismatic leader Cyrus to be assassinated, and Coney Island's Warriors to be falsely accused. Can they make it home before the rest of the city tries to kill them?
Joining us is a special guest, the writer and cartoonist Michael Kupperman, creator of Snake 'n' Bacon and author of All the Answers.
Starring Michael Beck, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, and Deborah Van Valkenburgh. Directed by Walter Hill. Written by Walter Hill and David Shaber, from Sol Yurick's novel.
The ultimate himbo pursues his dancing dreams during one of the worst periods of New York City’s history, and ends up a cultural icon—off-screen, of course.
Starring John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller, Paul Pape, Donna Pescow, and Martin Shakar. Written by Norman Wexler. Directed by John Badham.
This month, we are joined with a special guest, Tim Ryan, the King of Janitors, for a watch of Michael Bay's Arthurian epic, Transformers: The Last Knight, in which Mark Wahlberg teams up with a hot Oxford don who is apparently the last descendent of Merlin, and a selection of Autobots, to take on a corrupted Optimus Prime, using Excalibur. No, I'm not making this up. It's a complete nonsense movie.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, Anthony Hopkins, Stanley Tucci, Laura Haddock, Isabela Moner, Jerrod Carmichael, Tony Hale, Mitch Pileggi, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Gemma Chan, John Goodman, and Omar Sy.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A Sicilan boy in post-war Italy is taken under the wing of the local projectionist, and begins a life-long love of the movies, while watching how the world changes around him. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, this is a funny, moving film about love, art, and community.
Starring Philippe Noiret, Salvatore Cascio, Jacques Perrin, Antonella Attili, and Agnese Nano. Written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore.
An evil Irish toymaker is plotting a mass child sacrifice using his Halloween masks, and it's up to one alcoholic doctor to stop him. There's no Michael Myers, but there is a pretty baroque and silly plot here under a lot of early 1980s grime.
Starring Tom Atkins, Stacy Nelkin, and Dan O'Herlihy. Written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace.
The evil grimoire the Necronomicon sends Ash Williams—chainsaw hand all—back to the Dark Ages where he helps King Arthur battle the forces of the Undead.
Starring Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, and Ian Ambercrombie. Written by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi. Directed by Sam Raimi.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A sexy gerontologist falls in with an Egyptian/French vampire and her thin white duke in this gothic--and we do mean gothic--erotic horror set in New York City.
Starring Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Cliff De Young. Written by Ian Davis and Michael Thomas from Whitley Strieber's novel. Directed by Tony Scott.
Our friend Jen has brought us a semi-forgotten Rankin-Bass Halloween movie that features racially-tinged zombies, sexual harrassment, and a bad Jimmy Stewart impression. Maybe there's a reason this doesn't often show up on TV.
Starring Boris Karloff, Phyllis Diller, Allen Swift, and Gale Garnette. Written by Arthur Rankin Jr., Len Korobkin and Harvey Kurtzman. Directed by Jules Bass.
Rick Springfield is a vampire detective in Los Angeles hunting a serial killer. What more do you need? This failed tv pilot went on to become the cable series Forever Knight, which is shockingly not another D.C. Batman series.
We welcome back Alana Phelan to the show, having brought us this wonderful little paranormal piece of junk. Check out Alana's work at https://polyamorouslibrarian.wordpress.com
Starring Rick Springfield, John Kapelos, Laura Johnson, Robert Harper, and Michael Nader. Written by Barney Cohen and James D. Parriott. Directed by Farhad Mann.
An L.A. private eye investigating the murder of a local businessman uncovers a corrupt world of sex, money, and violence. Also, every major American cartoon character from the 20th century shows up at some point. Heavily influenced by films like Chinatown and The Big Sleep and featuring special effects that fully realize the potential of earlier films like Anchors Away and Mary Poppins that mix live acting and animation, this might be the greatest film of the 1980s.
(This episode is a little bit of a cheat--we've both seen this film many, many times, but we needed a fill-in episode, and as this was playing in a theater near us this summer, we jumped at the chance to cover it.)
Starring Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloydd, Charles Fleischer, Kathleen Turner, Joanna Cassidy, and Stubby Kaye. Directed by Robet Zemeckis. Written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman.
This month, we check out the pilot for the British tv show Merlin from 2008, which rewrites the Arthurian story in some pretty significant ways, some of which really rub us the wrong way. Why is Merlin so young? Why is Arthur living with Uther? And why does the dragon look so terrible?
Starring Colin Morgan, Bradley James, Angel Coulby, Anthony Head, Richard Wilson, and John Hurt. Written by Julian Jones. Directed by James Hawes.
This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A biker gang kidnapps an ex-soldier's rock star girlfriend, and he gets revenge through the power of Jim Steinman power ballads and giant hammers in a very silly "Rock 'n' Roll Fable" from the guy who gave us The Warriors.
Starring Michael Pare, Diane Lane, Willem Dafoe, Rick Moranis, and Amy Madigan. Written by Walter Hill and Larry Gross. Directed by Walter Hill. Music by Jim Steinman, Ry Cooder, and others.
Mary and Dennis go to the Space Melt Power Hour in Philadelphia, and talk a little about the Philly movie scene.
Thanks to Bruce Bohri and the people at Space 1026 for hosting the movie night.
Sophmoric, misogynistic, violent, and incredibly influential, this Canadian animated feature based on the science fiction magazine and featuring comedians from SCTV is equal parts terrible and awesome, and really brings out our inner teenage dirtbags.
Also, we look at Richard Corben's original animated short Neverwhere, the basis for the comic book character Den and his segment of the film.
Starring John Candy, Rodger Bumpass, Jackie Burroughs, Joe Flaherty, Don Francks, Eugene Levy, Alice Playten, Harold Ramis, and more. Written by Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum. Directed by Gerald Potterton. Based on original stories by Richard Corben, Angus McKie, Dan O'Bannon, and a really unimpressed and uncredited Jean "Moebius" Giraud.
We were hoping for some gaudy Satanic Panic nonsense, and instead we get The Paper Chase with a nerdy Tom Hanks in the middle of a very boring psychotic break. Meant to warn against role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, it's mostly a really dull, rote drama, with nary a demon to be found.
Starring Tom Hanks, Christ Makepiece, Wendy Crewson, David Wysocki, and Murray Hamilton. Written by Tom Lazarus from a novel by Rona Jaffe. Directed by Steven Hilliard Stern.
We take on the notorious Caligula, the story of the third Roman emperor who murdered his way to the throne and married his sister, in two forms--the original Bob Guccione cut with its hardore sex scenes, and the restored Gore Vidal/Tinto Brass version with its more measured editing, and find in the restoration a surprisingly decent film--the original theatrical version, however, lives up to its reputation.
Starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mrren, Teresa Ann Savoy, Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud, John Steiner, and Guido Manarri. Written by Gore Vidal. Directed by Tinto Brass.
Special guest Sarah Sahim joins us to discuss Richard E. Grant's autobiographical film Wah Wah, about the dissolution of his parents marriage and his father's alcoholism, agains the backdrop of the end of British colonial rule in Swaziland. What does this have to do with King Arthur? Well, as a goodbye gift to the visiting Princess Margaret, the British colonial community puts on a production of Camelot with a black Lancelot. A frustrating and frequently incurious film all around that squanders any opportunity to really grapple with the meaning of the end of an empire.
Starring Gabriel Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, Emily Watson, and Miranda Richardson. Written and directed by Richard E. Grant.
To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
An Atlantic City oyster-schucker and an aging gangster are on the run after her ex-husband rips off a Philly drug-running operation. Filmed as the Jersey Shore opened up to gambling, it captures a city under the wrecking ball of an uncertain future.
Starring Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, and Robert Joy. Written by John Guare. Directed by Louis Malle.
A Malibu dirtbag is recruited by three older men to teach them how to pick up chicks, and a parade of topless women ensues. A world of sex, female bodybuilding, and hair metal opens up for our trio of losers, until one of them takes it too far, and our young dirtbag suddenly has to grow up and grow a pair.
Starring Grant Cramer, Courtney Gains, Roberta Collins, Gary Wood. Written by Eric Alter, Steve Greene, and Mark Griffiths. Directed by Mark Griffiths.
A young Amish boy witnesses a murder by corrupt Philadelphia cops, leaving a rogue detective to protect the boy and his family from their wrath while hiding in the Pennsylvania countryside.A dreamlike mix of brutal noir, romantic longing, and pastoral comedy, it's one of the rare films that let Ford stretch out as an actor during his action heyday.
Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas, and Danny Glover. Written by Earl W. Wallace and William Kelley. Directed by Peter Weir.
Just in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics, we visit the 1924 Paris Olympics and the true story of two runners who overcome discrimination--antisemitism, class differences, and religious devotion--to become a team and win the gold. With its iconic Oscar-winning synth score by Vangelis, it also won Best Picture, Screenplay, and Costumes.
Starring Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Alice Krige, Ian Holme, and John Guilgud. Directed by Hugh Hudson. Written by Colin Welland.
John Candy just wants to take his family to the lake for a summer vacation, the last thing he needs is Dan Ackroyd tagging along, humiliating him, and stealing his money. But that's family for you. This feels like an unused National Lampoon's Vacation script, and it turns out, thats exactly what it is.
Starring John Candy, Dan Ackroyd, Stephanie Faracy, and Annette Benning. Written by John Hughes. Directed by Howard Deutch.
A computer programmer gets sucked into the mainframe of his former employer and does battle with a malevolent artificial intelligence in a futuristic world right out of a black-light poster. One of Walt Disney Pictures' better forays into science fiction brings us a visually-dazzling world, but that doesn’t quite make up for a story that’s both nonsensical and a bit of a slog.
Starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Barnard Hughes. Written by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. Directed by Steven Lisberger. Music by Wendy Carlos.
An arrogant New York shock-jock's fall from grace is tempered by the debt he owes to an eccentric unhoused man, the woman he loves, and a search for the Holy Grail in Terry Gilliam's magical-realist tale of redemption.
Starring Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer, and Michael Jeter. Written by Richard LaGravanese. Directed by Terry Gilliam.
To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A washed-up, alcoholic ex-ballplayer is recruited to coach the worst team in little league, and sets off to pull them together into a real team, where the star pitcher is a girl and the best player is a dirtbike-riding juvenile delinquent. It's a classic 1970s snobs-versus-slobs story of rooting for the losers, the bums, the misfits.
Starring Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neill, Vic Morrow, Jackie Earl Haley, and Joyce Van Patten. Written by Bill Lancaster. Directed by Michael Ritchie.
A book editor witnesses a murder during a cross-country trip, and is plunged into a Hitchcockian world of murder and intrigue. Eventually Richard Pryor shows up, and we get some unfortunate blackface. What can I say, it's the 1970s.
Starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh, Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty, Ray Walston, Scatman Crothers, and Richard Kiel. Written by Colin Higgins. Directed by Arthur Hiller.
A Miami Vice-influenced cross between neo-Noir and over-the-top action, it’s the story of two cops—one an alcoholic detective, the other an undercover cop playing hitman—taking down some Hong Kong gangsters. It has gung-fu, babies in peril, and the boxiest, beigest computers the 1990s could deliver.
Starring Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung, Theresa Mo, Philip Chan, and Anthony Wong. Written by Gordon Chan and Barry Wong. Directed by John Woo.
Apologies to any listeners for the sound, this was recorded while Mary had a bad cold.
Young lovers Anna and Françoise, freshly graduated from college, find themselves in a mysterious forest, where they fall prey to Morgan le Fay, the fairy queen of Avalon who rules her magic island as a savage, Sapphic nightmare. For a sleazy erotic horror film, it's much better than it deserves to be--surprisingly atmospheric, with authentic elements of fairy lore, folk horror, and medieval literary tropes amidst the soft-core action.
Starring Dominique Delpierre, Mireille Saunin, Michèle Perello, and Alfred Baillou. Written by Bruno Gantillon and Jacques Chaumelle. Directed by Bruno Gantillon.
This is a preview of our Patreon-only series Hollywood Avalon: An Arthurian Film Podcast. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A sheet-music salesman's life spirals out of control during the Great Depression, but that doesn't stop him from daydreaming about a better life through song. A film noir plot dressed up as a big, Busby Berkeley-style musical comedy, this remake of a British tv series was a massive box-office bomb, but has become a cult favorite.
Starring Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Jessica Harper, and Christopher Walken. Written by Dennis Potter. Directed by Herbert Ross.
In a world where dancing is banned, only one boy has the courage to stand up to the religious fanatics denying his magical feet. Or something. I guess.
Starring Kevin Bacon, John Lithgow, Lori Singer, Diane Weist, and Christ Penn. Written by Dean Pitchford. Directed by Herbert Ross.
Bored suburban kids get into trouble, hassled by the cops until it turns deadly, and ending in an orgy of destruction--a pretty familiar American story. Sitting somewhere between low-budget exploitation films and more thoughtful, nervy fair, this cult movie pulls off having its cake and eating it, exploring the root causes of juvenile delinquency while having some awesome explosions.
Starring Michael Kramer, Matt Dillon, Pamela Ludwig, Vincent Spano, and Harry Northup. Written by Charles S. Haas and Tim Hunter. Directed by Jonathan Kaplan.
A gambler's cousin shows up from Hungary and suddenly turns his dirtbag life upsidedown, sending them on a roadtrip around America.
Starring John Lurie, Eszter Balint, and Richard Edson. Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch.
We return to Camelot with a look at the 1967 film production of the Lerner & Loewe musical, again starring Richard Harris as King Arthur. At three hours, it's an overly-long production that loses steam in its third hour, but the first two are lush and often inspired, and possibly the best-looking movie we've covered for the show.
Starring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, David Hemmings, and Lionel Jeffries. Written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Directed by Joshua Logan.
This is a preview of our Patreon-only series Hollywood Avalon: An Arthurian Film Podcast. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
A black comedy about a sexually-repressed couple who fund their dream of opening a restaurant by posing as sex workers and robbing and murdering Los Angeles swingers. When a local thief worms his way into the scheme, everything goes haywire, jeopardizing their chance at the American Dream.
Starring Paul Bartel, Mary Waronov, Robert Beltran, Susan Saiger, Buck Henry, Ed Begley Jr., John Paragon, and Edie McClurg. Written by Paul Bartel and Richard Blackburn. Directed by Paul Bartel.
A mysterous boy is adopted by a couple and soon shows himself to be unnervingly perfect. Is he really a robot? Maybe even a secret military project? Yeah, of course he is, this is the 1980s. It's not great.
Starring Barret Oliver, Michael McKean, and Mary Beth Hurt. Written by David Ambrose, Allan Scott, and Jeffrey Ellis. Directed by John Heyman
We welcome back Alana Phelan to the show to talk about a Corey Feldman-Corey Haim fantasy with weirdo philosopher Jason Robards inhabiting Feldman's body as he tries to romance Meredith Salinger. It's a very weird movie loved by this weeks' guest.
Starring Corey Feldman, Corey Haim, Meredith Salinger, Jason Robards, Piper Laurie, and Harry Dean Stanton. Written by Marc Rocco, Daniel Jay Franklin, and D.E. Eisenberg. Directed by Marc Rocco.
Dan Ackroyd's misguided take on the copaganda classic Dragnet was a huge disappointment when Dennis saw it in theaters back in 1987. Does his opinion hold up? Or is the film even worse than he remembers? Should he have talked Mary out of covering this at all? But at least we finally get to cover a Tom Hanks movie for the show, right?
Starring Dan Ackroyd, Tom Hanks, Christopher Plummer, Dabney Coleman, Alexandra Paul, and Harry Morgan. Written by Dan Ackroyd, Alan Zweibel, and Tom Mankiewicz. Directed by Tom Mankiewicz.
We start the first of a two-part series examining the musical Camelot, the Broadway hit based on T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which I recently re-read in preparation. For part one, we look at both the original cast recording from 1960, as well as two clips from the Ed Sullivan show, featuring Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as Guenevere. Unfortunately, this is all we could find of that particular version of the show. We were, however, able to find a 1981 stage revival starring Richard Harris and Meg Bussart and filmed for HBO.
The 1981 production differs from the original production, streamlining some elements, cutting some characters, but largely is the same show. In both cases, the effort to condense a 700-page novel into a two and a half hour musical greatly simplifies some of the driving philosophy of the book—as much a meditation on politics and the rise of fascism as it is a consciously-anachronistic fantasy and elegy for a dying world (very much reading like Lord of the Rings meets A Connecticut Yankee). However, focusing on the love triangle and Arthur’s conundrum of balancing justice and mercy, might and right, makes for an effective musical, one which even influenced the popular culture conception of the then-current Kennedy administration.
In our next episode, we will examine the 1967 film production of the same musical.
1960 Broadway Original Cast Recording: Starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, Robert Goulet, David Hurst, Robert Coote, Roddy McDowall, and Robin Stewart.
1981 Revival: Starring Richard Harris, Meg Bussert, Richard Muenz, James valentine, Barrie Ingham, Richard Backus, and Thor Fields. Music by Frederick Loewe. Lyrics and Book by Alan Jay Lerner.
To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
We finish "Dennis versus the movies" with a very silly Canadian hair metal horror movie wherein Jon Mikl Thor battles a rubbery devil. It's the kind of goofy trash they used to show at 3 a.m. when we were a proper country.
Starring Jon Mikl Thor. Written by Jon Mikl Thor. Directed by John Fasano.
The Rankin-Bass adaptation of Peter S. Beagle's fairy tale about the last unicorn in the world and the small band of humans who help her is a melancholy story gorgeously animated by the Japanese studio Topcraft. This was a favorite movie of Mary's as a kid, but completely unknown to Dennis. This month, we fix that.
Starring Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Tammy Grimes, Jeff Bridges, Christopher Lee, Keenan Wynn, Rene Auberjonois, and Angela Lansbury. Written by Peter S. Beagle. Driected by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.
"Dennis vs. the Movies" continues with a look at Martin Scorsese's black comedy about a yuppie who meets the wrong woman, is stranded overnight in Soho, and hunted by an angry mob. It's a comedic take on the country's feelings about New York, expressed in other film of the period--a terrifying, lawless place, Escape from New York, The Warriors, "the Bronx is burning" and all that--and stands it on its head. Forty years later, it's hard not to feel nostalgic for a world where artists could squat in warehouses and diners were open all night, even if it came with a side of vigilantes and home invasions.
Starring Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, Verna Bloom, Cheech and Chong, Linda Fiorentino, John Heard, and Catherine O'Hara. Written by Joseph Minion, story by Joe Frank. Directed by Martin Scorsese.
We kick off "Dennis versus the movies" month with a viewing of the second Muppet movie, The Great Muppet Caper, in which the Muppets go to England and get tangled up with Charles Grodin and a jewel heist. Joining us is our special guest, Zach Woliner, a puppeteer and children's entertainer.
Starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Charles Grodin, Diana Rigg, John Cleese, Robert Morley, Peter Ustinov, Jack Warden, and of course Peter Falk. Written by Tom Patchett, Jay Tarses, Jerry Juhl, and Jack Rose, and directed by Jim Henson.
David Lynch's violent romantic drama plays like William Faulkner had written The Wizard of Oz starring Elvis Presley--a strange, campy, Southern Gothic road trip through America that Lynch described as "a love story in Hell".
Starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Diane Ladd, Harry Dean Stanton, and Isabella Rossellini.
Neil Jordan's neo-noir romance about a jailbird driver, a high-priced escort, and the mob boss running everything is a bleak, sometimes-funny look at duplicity, delusion, and the seedy side of London.
Starring Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, and Clarke Peters. Written by Neil Jordan and David Leland, and directed by Neil Jordan.
From the nadir of Disney filmmaking comes yet another spin on Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, this time featuring Dennis Dugan as a NASA engineer accidentally sent back in time with his android twin Hermes. It's not the worst movie we've covered for the show--the supporting cast of English comedians as Arthur's court are fine--but it's not exactly Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
Starring Dennis Dugan, Sheila White, Kenneth Moore, Ron Moody, and Jim Dale. Written by Don Tait and directed by Russ Mayberry.
This is a preview of our latest episode from Hollywood Avalon. Join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this entire episode and the series Hollywood Avalon, where we watch Arthurian films: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
Omar, a young Brit from a Pakistani family, and his boyfriend Johnny, a former skinhead, attempt to open the nicest laundromat in London while tackling issues of family, race, class, sex, crime, and Thatcher-era austerity.
Starring Saeed Jaffrey, Roshan Seth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gordon Warnecke, and Shirley Anne Field. Written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Stephen Frears
Merchant-Ivory's lush adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel of romantic struggle against Edwardian repression is the best possible version of those PBS dramas your mom likes to watch--better, even, because this one has full frontal male nudity.
Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, and Simon Callow. Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and directed by James Ivory.
New York's hottest club is Liquid Sky. This club has everything: heroin, David Bowie impersonators, aliens, necrophelia, shrimp, cocaine, a Fairlight CMI synthesizer, Germans, murder, and anorgasmia.
(A UFO causes havoc in the New York downtown art scene, where sex and drugs mix together with casual cruelty and sometimes murder. It's pretty cool.)
Starring Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas, and Otto von Wernherr. Written by Slava Tsukerman, Nina V. Kerova, and Anne Carlisle. Directed by Slava Tsukerman.
It's a cyberpunk body-horror story of sex and violence, shot through with the kind of late 1980s indie movie aesthetics that we seriously miss, sitting somewhere between David Lynch and MTV.
Starring Shinya Tsukamoto, Tomorowo Taguchi, and Kei Fujiwara. Written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto.
David Lowrey’s rewriting of the medieval poem Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight is well-acted, and has some lovely art direction, it ultimately misses the mark in several ways: the CGI is murky, the crucial section at Sir Bertilak’s castle is truncated, and the ending is muddled at best. The poem having an ambiguous meaning is fine—you can debate whether it’s a celebration of chivalry, an elegy for it, or even a satire of it—but to leave the ending as ambiguous here as it is robs the film of any real meaning.
Starring Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, and Ralph Ineson. Written and Drected by David Lowrey.
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Toxic fandom by way of Stephen King, with one of the most famous torture scenes in cinema. Look, our fans are great, and we're gonna keep saying that, please put down the hammer.
Starring James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, and Lauren Bacall. Written by William Goldman and directed by Rob Reiner.
Joe Dante's love letter to the midcentury monster movie, nestled in a comedy about a William Castle-type director promoting a film in the Florida Keys during the Cuban Missile Crisis, is a deliriously silly movie that feels made for Mary and Dennis.
Starring John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Lisa Jakub, Kellie Martin, Jesse Lee Soffer, James Villemarie, Robert Picardo, John Sayles, and of course Dick Miller. Written by Charles S. Haas and Jerico Stone, and directed by Joe Dante.
Barry Levinson’s first film, set in that quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, is a surprisingly smart examination of young men and relationships, and why people should (or shouldn’t) get married. It’s nostalgic without being overly sentimental, looking back at 1959 not as some golden age of youth, but simply another, earlier time, and not that different from 1982 (and really not that different from 2023, except for the increasing lack of diners in this country, something we get into in the episode).
Starring Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Tim Daly, Steve Guttenberg, Paul Riser, and Ellen Barkin. Written and directed by Barry Levinson.
John Huston's final film is a surprisingly warm adaptation of James Joyce's short story about a Twelfth Night Christmas party that shows the cracks in a marriage, opening up questions about love, identity, and how well we can truly know one another.
Starring Anjelica Huston, Donal McCann, Helena Carroll, Cathleen Delany, Dan O'Herlihy, Donal Donnelly, Séan McClory, and Colm Meaney. Directed by John Huston and written by Tony Huston.
Rankin-Bass are responsible for several classics, from The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. This is not one of them. No, it's twee Stage Irish nonsense with Americans doing terrible accents, and a complete misunderstanding what a banshee (bean sí) is. Also, apparently St. Patrick is a leprechaun. Whatever.
Starring Art Carney, Peggy Cass, Bob McFadden, Ken Jennings (not that Ken Jennings), and Christine Mitchell. Written by Romeo Muller, and directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.
We're surveying a selection of Bugs Bunny cartoons, all with a medieval theme, some of which are explicitly Arthurian. The earliest, "Knights Must Fall", is a pretty generic burlesque of Bugs Bunny versus a powerful knight, but draws some inspiration from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, especially in Bugs's use of locomotives and whatnot. "Knight Mare Hare" is a pretty unfocused take on Connecticut Yankee, complete with framing device, and while it's not a particularly tight cartoon, it has some classic Chuck Jones abstract backgrounds, and some pretty good gags. "Knighty Knight Bugs" is a much more tightly-constructed story, with Bugs being sent by King Arthur to recover the Singing Sword, only to encounter Yosemite Sam as the Black Knight. This won the Academy Award for best animated short, and it's not hard to understand why. "Bugs Bunny in King Arthur's Court" is an oddity--a 20-minute retelling of Connecticut Yankee made in 1978, it's sometimes surprisingly faithful to Twain's novel--like Bugs setting up factories like Hank Morgan--while at other times making extremely strange choices, like having Daffy Duck as King Arthur. Voices by Mel Blanc. "Knights Must Fall" and "Knighty Knight Bugs" directed by Fritz Freleng, "Knight Mare Hare" and "King Arthur's Court" directed by Chuck Jones. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies. If you are reading this newsletter, you may already be a member!
Two hours of upper-middle-class naval-gazing? A poison pill of nostaliga? An exericize in self-loathing? A critique of ex-hippies who sold out? Or an attempt at excusing "going straight" and embracing being a yuppie? Maybe it's all those things. Or maybe that's putting too much weight to put on a movie that's mostly a small drama about people coming together after a friend's suicide. Starring Kevin Cline, Glenn Close, William Hurt, Tom Berenger, Jeff Goldblum, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, JoBeth Williams, and Kevin Costner's body. Written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan.
A right-wing paranoid fantasy where a Cuban-Russian communist invasion is defeated by child soldiers in Colorado should be a lot more fun than this incoherent slog of a movie. Politics aside, this movie just isn't very good, with interchangable characters and a plot that feels stitched together from boys' adventure magazines and John Bircher rags. How did the man who made Conan the Barbarian make something so... un-fun?
Starring Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey, Darren Dalton, Ben Johnson, Harry Dean Stanton. and Powers Boothe. Directed by John Milius, screenplay by Kevin Reynolds and John Milius.
A dark and sober look at the consequences of a nuclear war between the US and USSR, full of panic and confusion, and surprisingly light on sensationalism, released at the height of the Cold War. Still one of the highest-rated tv programs of all time, and possibly influential enough to get Reagan to come to the table for armament talks. Starring Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, John Cullum, Steve Guttenberg, John Lithgow, Amy Madigan, and William Allen Young. Directed by Nicholas Meyer and written by Edward Hume.
This episode also contains a clip of Carl Sagan from the debate show that aired after the film: https://youtube.com/shorts/V7R4nqyMMSg?si=QnfecMptNzk3thXv
Well, here we go--a movie which boldly asks "what if we took the Arthur legend and made it Dances with Wolves meets the atheism subreddit?"
Starring Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgard, Mads Mikkelsen, Ioan Gruffudd, and Ray Winstone. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Dave Franzoni.
To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.
The Spandex King of L.A. is delighted when his wife is kidnapped by two bumbling criminals, less so when he's blackmailed by two even more incompent criminals. It's "The Ransom of Red Chief" in high 1980s Memphis-Milano decor.
Starring Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold, Helen Slater, Anita Morris, and Bill Pullman. Directed by Jim Abrams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. Written by Dale Launer.
Loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft novella and produced by the maker of Society, Re-Animator is the gory, gross, graphic, and goofy parody of Frankenstein that spawned a horror-comedy franchise. After a screening at the gallery/studio Space 1026, we interviewed Bruce (@gumball_eyes), the curator for the film series Space Melt, and talked about the film, exhibitions, and why it's fun to watch movies with people.
Starring Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, and Robert Sampson. Directed by Stuart Gordon, and written by Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, and Stuart Gordon.
We bring back writer Alana Phelan (@hellolibrarian) to talk about the horror-comedy Waxwork, which features the great David Warner doing his best Vincent Price impression as the villainous owner of a waxwork museum, and a group of college students as his victims.
Starring Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, David Warner, Dana Ashbrook, and Patrick Macnee.Written and directed by Anthony Hickox.
This adaptation of a Bram Stoker novel is a campy bit of folk horror about a villainous pagan priestess who feeds the unsuspecting to the subterranean serpent she worships, and the hapless villagers who battle her, including a young archaeologist, a pair of sisters whose parents are missing, and the foppish local lord. It’s a Ken Russell film, so naturally it’s a subtle piece. Loosely based on the English legend of the Lambton Worm, it's a silly, smutty, absurdist bit of gothic comedy in the vein of An American Werewolf in London, sitting somewhere between a Doctor Who serial and The Wicker Man.
Starring Hugh Grant, Peter Capaldi, Amanda Donohoe, Catherine Oxenberg, and Sammi Davis. Written and directed by Ken Russell.
We jump back to the 1940s for a little British war-time musical about a nerd who is joins the army, is tricked into thinking he's found Excalibur, and decides to capture Nazis using it in a real "Dumbo's feather" situation. It's slight, silly, and mostly harmless.
This is a preview of the episode, part of our series Hollywood Avalon, a podcast dedicated to Arthurian film; to hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies
An Indiana electrician encounters a UFO and goes insane, a baby is abducted by aliens, and scienists have a battle of the bands against a spaceship. Steven Spielberg's follow-up to the massive success of Jaws turns out to be a blueprint for the rest of his filmography: the dissolution of the nuclear family through parental abandonment; strong religous themes and yearning; aliens and horror; the difficulty of communication. Even specific scenes we find in later films first show up here. It's a skeleton key to his body of work, a fascinating bookened to 2022's The Fabelmans, and arguably his best film.
Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and the great François Truffaut. Written and directed by Steven Spielberg.
This sequel to Stanley Kubrick's visionary masterpiece 2001: a Space Odyssey is a frustrating, uneven, but ultimately enjoyable and well-done science fiction film that is more about the need for world peace and space exploration than Kubrick's grappling with the mystery of consciousness and what it means to be human. Not the groundbreaking weirdness of its famous predecessor, but still worth seeing.
Starring Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, John Lithgow, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, and Elya Baskin. Written by Arthur C. Clark and Peter Hyams, and directed by Peter Hyams.
A film that boldly asks “What if we made a good version of Ferris Buehler’s Day Off?” It has all the beats of a John Hughes teen movie—especially that one—while actually saying something about America, capitalism, and class. It’s the film that made Tom Cruise a star, and unfortunately is saddled in pop culture memory with one very silly dance scene that has very little to do with what’s otherwise a very dark, funny, nervy movie about facing adulthood and disillusionment. A smarter film than expected, it eviscerates the model of “teen goes wild when his parents are away and has to set everything back the way it was before they get home” just as that template was being set for teen comedies.
Starring Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Curtis Armstrong, Bronson Pinchot, Joe Pantoliano, and Richard Masur. Written and directed by Paul Brickman.
We're back to school and already we want to drop out, thanks to what might be John Hughes' worst movie, an obnoxious take on Pygmalian that had us begging for Bill Paxton's Chet to come back to the movie early and bully these horrible little nerds. A film with only one redeeming value--a pretty great theme song.
Starring Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Kelly LeBrock, Bill Paxton, and Robert Downey Jr. Written and directed by John Hughes.
We wrap up the summer watching a movie that Mary loved as a kid, but Dennis has never seen--the original camp comedy and star-making vehicle for Bill Murray, Meatballs. It's the snobs-vs-slobs story that gave birth to a million imitators and inadvertantly the Wet Hot American Summer franchise. Does it hold up? Is Mary embarressed by a childhood favorite? Will Dennis regret never going to camp as a kid?
George Romero's rare departure from horror is an Arthurian tale about a band of traveling performers who have a kind of Renaissance Faire-meets-motocross-meets-professional wrestling, lead by the idealistic King William played by Ed Harris. It's a defense of independent film, a rumination on selling out, a celebration of a receding counterculture, and a clear-eyed examination of utopianism and its faults and contradictions. In short, its one of the best movies we've covered for either of our shows, and one that got right to our hearts.
It doesn't hurt that it was filmed in Pennsylvania.
We go all over the map with this one, from 19th century Romanticism to labor rights, from the inherent contradictions in Arthurian myth to a love for the woods of Pennsylvania.
This is a preview of the episode, part of our series Hollywood Avalon, a podcast dedicated to Arthurian film; to hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies
Everyone is shocked that Mary hasn't seen this comedy classic about Clark Griswold and his family's ill-fated trip across America to visit Wally World. From the suburbs of Chicago to the Kansas plains, the mountains of Colorado to the deserts of Arizona, and finally a sunny California full of disappointment, this turns out to be a very familiar trip for Mary and Dennis, who have a long history of very similar road trips with very similar disasters.
Do these National Lampoon movies have a weird mean streak? Is Chevy Chase too unlikeable and smug? Is all of this overcome by being really, really funny? Pretty much.
Starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Imogene Coca, Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall, John Candy, and Christine Brinkley. Directed by Harold Raimis and written by John Hughes.
It's summer, and we're still at the beach. Unfortunately, just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, the beach is closed because a shark ate a helicopter. That's right, we're watching Jaws 2, the unnecessary but completely expected sequel to one of the greatest films ever made, Jaws, and are, at the very least, disappointed by an unfocused story full of wasted potential, the wasted talents of Roy Scheider, and the wasted spectacle of a shark making a smorgasboard of some of the least likeable teens on film.
We wanted to hang out at the beach this episode, and felt it was time to finally see the movie that made Keanu Reeves an action star. We've got surfing, bank robbers in US president masks, Patrick Swayze spouting new age nonsense, skydiving, more surfing, a lot of guns, and Gary Busey. It's pretty great.
Blake Edwards' 1980s remake of a Weimar-era German film about a gender-bending cabaret singer and the mobster who falls in love with her/him in 1930s Paris, starring Julie Andrews, James Garner, and Robert Preston, is a delightful creampuff of a movie that should have absolutely no relevance to the incredibly stupid political and cultural climate of the United States in 2023, and yet here we are. What a time to be alive.
We’re back in Los Angeles for Steve De Jarnatt’s apocalyptic thriller with Anthony Edwards as a musician who accidentally finds out that nuclear war has broken out, leading to mass panic through the city, and Mare Winningham as the girl he's only just met but now wants to save from nuclear annihilation.
We also get a chance to talk to musician George Korein of George Korein and the Spleen, who wrote a song about Miracle Mile called “Drowning in a Helicopter” on his album Denoument. Check out George’s music at https://georgekorein.bandcamp.com
We're back just in time for the end of the world. An unsubtle but fun romp through a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, where two sisters and a random guy fend off zombies and mad scientists bent on harvesting their blood.
We take on a more recent movie this time around, a charming British kids' film about a boy who finds Excalibur and learns he and his friends must defeat a reawakened Morgana before things get worse in Britain--and things are already pretty bad there in the dark year of 2019. We were lured in by the promise of Patrick Stewart as Merlin, and while he's not in it as much as we'd hoped--the man's in his eighties after all--the film succeeds on its own, with plenty of scenes filmed in places steeped in Arthuriana, like Tintagel and Glastonbury.
This is a preview of the episode, part of our series Hollywood Avalon, a podcast dedicated to Arthurian film; to hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies
We're still on hiatus, so we pre-recorded this bonus episdoe with an old friend of ours, writer Carolyn West (@Firebunny3000), a viewing of the 1954 monster movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, the last of the great Universal monsters, which was shown at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia back in early June of 2023.
We'll be back recording soon, but in the meantime, enjoy.
We welcome Dan Wade of the Wheel of Randy podcast to the show to talk about the Robert Redford baseball movie with a Randy Newman score. There's a lot of Arthurian myth talk, too, so this is a stealth Hollywood Avalon episode. We talk baseball--a lot of baseball--Randy Newman, and mythology in an episode that goes into extra innings.
It's the surprisingly sweet and often funny story of a Swedish boy coming to terms with his mother's illness and death during the late 1950s, while also learning about love, sex, and the fallibility of adults. Throw out any ideas of dire stories, black-and-white cinematography, or terrible child actors, this film is light, colorful, and thoughtful in ways that really surprised us.
We were not prepared for this absolutely bizzare horror flick, but it will stick with us forever. A perfect combination of 1980s sleaze, iffy acting, body horror, and social satire, it's also thorougly nauseating. We have no regrets.
David Lean's final film, an adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel about a white woman who accuses an Indian man of rape, is--at best--deeply flawed, but features several great performances and stunning scenery. Too bad it also features Alec Guinness in brownface, not to mention the difficult subject matter.
CW: rape/sexual assault, racial issues, Brits
Hollywood tries to give a broad adaptation of Malory's Le Morte Darthur, and is fitfully successful--bright Technicolor and on-location filming doesn't make up for Robert Taylor's defiantly-American accent, and the bowdlerized romance between Lancelot and Guinevere doesn't exactly sizzle, but as a product of 1950s studio filmmaking, it could be worse. We'd like to than Patreon-supporter Stephen Cooke for providing us with a copy of the film. This is a preview of our Patreon-only episode; to listen to the full episode, support the show by signing up for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies
Imaging you're really, really good at cosplay--so good you create a time loop that dooms you. We talk nostalgia, the vastness of the Great Lakes, and the San Francisco Music Box Company, among other things.
It’s the movie that started this whole podcast: Russel Mulcahy’s ridiculous, awesome, Queen-scored tale of an immortal Scottish swordsman/New York antiques dealer who goes up against the villainous Kurgan. And in honor of the event, we have a special guest, comedian and voice actor Jason Gore from The Best Show with Tom Scharpling and 108.9 The Hawk. It’s a great chat, and we're grateful to Jason for taking the time to watch the and talk to us about it.
Everyone's seen this horror comedy about teen vampires--except for Mary, who apparently didn't believe in fun when she was a kid. This movie rocks.
This massive hit about a hooker who meets her Prince Charming maybe isn’t the most progressive movie around—it’s certainly no Angel—but for what it is, it’s pretty cute. Sure, there’s nothing groundbreaking here—it could easily have been the plot of a pre-code screwball comedy, and probably was. But Julia Roberts and Richard Gere have good chemistry here, and you can really see why this movie made her a star.
A largely inessential musical that completely bowdlerizes Mark Twain's satirical novel, it gets by on bright colors and Bing Crosby's charm. Look, I don't hate this movie, it's fine, but there's definitely something lacking--the tunes aren't very memorable, the romance is slight, and it's very strange to have one knight speaking with a very thick New York accent. This is a free preview of our monthly Patreon-only podcast Hollywood Avalon, where we take on movies with Arthurian themes. Sign up for $3/month to help support MvM and get access to Hollywood Avalon:
https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies
William Friedkin's crime drama about a secret service agent looking for revenge against a counterfeiting ring is hands-down one of the most intense movies we've watched for the show. From Willem Dafoe's menacing counterfeiter, to William Petersen's full frontal male nudity, to one of the wildest car chases ever put on film, it's a gripping neo-noir exercise in excess.
This movie left us conflicted--what do you do when a movie is well-made, has some great performances, has progressive views on transpeople, and yet features an incredibly unlikable protagonist that it expects you to root for, and creates strawmen feminists to get angry about? Well, that's the magic of movies, baby.
For years, Mary'd heard this fantasy from George Lucas and Ron Howard was a horrible flop that should be forgotten. Turns out, it's a pretty charming adventure, with a great cast, good effects, and a witches duel that doesn't disappoint.
In 1981, watching two men spend two hours talking about art and philosophy as they sip soup must have seemed strange, but now we live in the age of podcasts, talk radio, and YouTube, so really, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory's colloquy was really just ahead of its time. An exploration of how we stave off sleepwalking through life, a story of the search for authenticty, and an exercize in how to make minimalist filmmaking into something compelling and beautiful, it's also just frequently really funny and strange.
Spaulding Gray's spoken word concert film, directed by Jonathan Demme, really surpasses our expectations, and leaves us thinking about the nature of performance, of trying to capture art on record, and whether or not "morality is a movable feast".
Schoolgirl by day, hooker by night, on the hunt for a serial killer of her fellow street-walkers, Angel is a real ride of a movie that is surprisingly compassionate about the victims and the assorted outsiders and weirdos making a living on Hollywood Boulevard.
We were recommended this now-obscure comedy, a pointless... remake? of Cabaret, set amongst wealthy Los Angeles college students. There's no Nazis, no real musical numbers, just a biker boyfriend, gay panic, and some very toxic ideas about sex and romance.
We're caught between the moon and New York City when Dennis shows Mary a film he really liked as a kid, the romantic comedy Arthur--a film which dares to ask "can a rich drunk end up getting what he wants and experience very little personal growth whatsoever?" And yet! It's a pretty fun movie!
Preview of our new show!
We kick off our patreon-only podcast about Arthurian film with a very special movie, 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which introduced Mary to the idea of the Holy Grail. It's Indie versus the Nazis, which is how you know it's a good one.
It's a real "How have you never seen this?" episode, when Mary finally sits down and watches the John Cusack-Ione Skye romance with the iconic boombox scene. Turns out this movie, Cameron Crowe's first as a director, is much smarter and more interesting than one famous image, in no small part down to John Mahoney's performance as Skye's father.
Mary is going in blind to this movie, a rare non-Star Wars film that features Mark Hamill on-screen. It's a semi-autobiographical movie about director Sam Fuller's experiences in World War II as part of the First Infantry Division, which ran the gammut from Sicilian grandmothers cooking them dinner to liberating a concentration camp.
There's something audacious about making an over-three-hour film lionizing American Communists and the Russian Revolution and releasing it in the same year Ronald Reagan comes to power, but Warren Beatty's epic balances romance, politics, and historical sweep in a way that recalls films like Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With the Wind, but without all the ambient racism. Written, directed, and starring Beatty as journalist and party leader John Reed, with Diane Keaton as his wife, the writer Louise Bryant, and Jack Nicholson as the playwrite Eugene O'Neill.
It's Mary vs. James Bond Part II, as we take on the other Bond movie of 1983 and the non-canonical return of Sean Connery. It's a better movie than Octopussy, which doesn't require much. It also features a yacht with an absolutely wild history.
This week it's Mary vs James Bond, a franchise she never really got into or grew up with, but Dennis did and always liked, especially the films starring Roger Moore. This movie is a mess, from its central premise to its ridiculous title. On the one hand, Moore is too old, the plot is nonsense, the India segment is at Temple of Doom levels of cultural insensitivity, there’s a French guy playing a deposed Afghan prince, and it’s arguing against nuclear disarmament. On the other hand, twins murder a clown, there’s a lesbian jungle compound, and the movie is literally called Octopussy, so who’s to say if it’s good or bad.
What do you do when you're one of the world's biggest movie stars and the lead in two franchies? Well, if you're Sylvester Stallone, you make one of the more eccentric exercizes in copaganda, Cobra, a barely-coherent thriller with few thrills but a lot of baffling choices. Why do we have a serial killer and a cult? Why is Nielsen dancing with a robot pimp? What in the name of God did he do to that pizza? This is a film that is both very good and very bad--in other words, it's a Cannon Group feature. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen, and Brian Thompson, and directed? by George Cosmatos.
Well, in what feels like a fitting end to 2022, Mary has covid, and can't record a full episode. So we're putting out a bonus episode of material that previously was cut--a mix of bloopers and cut conversations that just didn't fit into their episodes. Oh, and swearing. We'll be back as soon as Mary and Dennis can be in the same room together again. Let's hope 2023 is a lot healthier.
Though she watched Pee-wee's Playhouse as a kid, this Christmas special somehow passed Mary by. But you're never too old for Pee-wee Herman, or for a selection of guest stars like Cher, Little Richard, Grace Jones, and K.D. Lang, not to mention Santa himself. We talk about variety shows, nostalgia, and Mary defends a much-maligned baked good.
This tv movie starring Henry Winkler as a New Hampshire Scrooge living during the Great Depression is pretty lackluster and looks like an episode of The Waltons--it's not the worst thing ever, but it's also not Mary's new favorite version of Dickens' story, one of her favorite books.
Bah humbug. Mary was never a fan of the Ernest character, and this movie did nothing to change her mind. If anything, it may have broken her Christmas spirit.
Thanksgiving is about family, so this week we’re welcoming back Mary’s sister Anne Jones as the guest for our look at the rock documentary/concert film about U2, Anne’s favorite band, but not Mary’s. Despite being sisters and living under the same roof for… 17 years? 18? Mary has never actually seen her sister’s favorite movie. So it’s time to sit down and take a look, and hope this doesn’t turn out like one of those terrible Thanksgiving dinners where it ends with cranberry sauce on the dining room walls.
For some reason, Mary's family wouldn't take her to see the live-action He-Man movie, despite buying her all the action figures her heart desired. Turns out, this was a wise decision. From the people who brought us Death Wish 2 and The Apple comes one of the cheapest-looking movies we've had the misfortune of covering. Why is this movie set in California and not Eternia? Does Dolph Lundgren have more than five lines? And what is up with Skeletor's face?
Sam Raimi's cult classic has long-eluded Mary, who was afraid she'd find the film too terrifying anyway. What happens when she finally confronts her fears? Is Sam Raimi the Orson Welles of horror? And just how great is Bruce Campbell? (Pretty great, let's be honest.)
Sam Raimi's cult classic has long-eluded Mary, who was afraid she'd find the film too terrifying anyway. What happens when she finally confronts her fears? Is Sam Raimi the Orson Welles of horror? And just how great is Bruce Campbell? (Pretty great, let's be honest.)
Our first bonus episode is an extended talk with guest Alana Phelan, about her own history with seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the community she found there, and how these things helped shape her own personal development and relationships. We talk not just about the movie, and midnight movies in general, but, appropriately enough, a lot about sex (but, uh, not in a porny... horny?... way). Probably want to listen to this one with your headphones on.
Also, we finally get to swear!
This is a preview of that bonus episode, the full length of which is available to our Patreon subscribers. Subscribe today at https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies at the $3 level to listen.
We welcome back author Alana Phelan (@hellolibrarian) to talk about Richard O'Brien's follow-up to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, wherein Brad and Janet return and are subjected to the horrors of reality television and psychological torture, all backed with a New Wave soundtrack. It's an odd movie, and better than we were expecting.
This week we welcome special guest Jessica Elsener to the show to discuss the David Cronenberg film The Dead Zone, a Stephen King story that asks the question--hey, if you really are a psychic, maybe sometimes it's OK to [redact] a guy you know will turn out to be another Hitler?
Jessica has a Bandcamp page: https://jessicaclariceelsener.bandcamp.com/
The music heard in this episode is from her album Beat Your Face!
This horror film (that's not a werewolf movie) starring Albert Finney is a strange mix of 1970s New York cop movie and New Age fetishization of Native Americans, with some commentary on urban renewal. Parts of it are compelling, parts of it are cringe, and all of it is grimey.
This fantasy-comedy from Monty Python's Terry Jones is not a great film, or even a good one, but there's a few interesting ideas to be found in it, a few funny sequences, and does feature concept art by Alan Lee. But it also features a very badly-miscast Tim Robbins, who goes down like a plate of lutefisk. There's no Valhalla earned by watching this.
CW: rape
This fantasy-comedy from Monty Python's Terry Jones is not a great film, or even a good one, but there's a few interesting ideas to be found in it, a few funny sequences, and does feature concept art by Alan Lee. But it also features a very badly-miscast Tim Robbins, who goes down like a plate of lutefisk. There's no Valhalla earned by watching this.
CW: rape
We go long on this episode about the cult British comedy starring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann as two drunken, unemployed actors who spend a weekend in the country. Under the surface is a surprising film about the end of the 1960s, the end of prolonged adolescence, and the end of a friendship. We talk about Doctor Who, Charles Dickens, George Harrison, and finally Mary gets into a rant about the (narrative) crimes of Steven Moffat.
We go long on this episode about the cult British comedy starring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann as two drunken, unemployed actors who spend a weekend in the country. Under the surface is a surprising film about the end of the 1960s, the end of prolonged adolescence, and the end of a friendship. We talk about Doctor Who, Charles Dickens, George Harrison, and finally Mary gets into a rant about the (narrative) crimes of Steven Moffat.
Summer is over, and we're back to school with a story about bullying, manic pixie dream grannies, and that dreaded term, character development. What would a Werner Herzog version look like? Why couldn't we get more Martin Mull? And hey, who's that maintence man?
Summer is over, and we're back to school with a story about bullying, manic pixie dream grannies, and that dreaded term, character development. What would a Werner Herzog version look like? Why couldn't we get more Martin Mull? And hey, who's that maintence man?
We bring the summer to a close with a very silly "Savage" Steve Holland movie starring John Cusack as a cynical cartoonist and Demi Moore as the singer he helps to save her family home on Nantucket. Sure, it's frequently juvenile, but it's a fun movie, features Bobcat Goldthwait, Joe Flaherty, Joel Murray, and Curtis Armstrong. We ask why Goldthwait is funny, what's the deal with Demi Moore's hair, and what is up with William Hickey, who may or may not be in a Weekend-At-Bernies situation.
We bring the summer to a close with a very silly "Savage" Steve Holland movie starring John Cusack as a cynical cartoonist and Demi Moore as the singer he helps to save her family home on Nantucket. Sure, it's frequently juvenile, but it's a fun movie, features Bobcat Goldthwait, Joe Flaherty, Joel Murray, and Curtis Armstrong. We ask why Goldthwait is funny, what's the deal with Demi Moore's hair, and what is up with William Hickey, who may or may not be in a Weekend-At-Bernies situtation.
We bring the summer to a close with a very silly "Savage" Steve Holland movie starring John Cusack as a cynical cartoonist and Demi Moore as the singer he helps to save her family home on Nantucket. Sure, it's frequently juvenile, but it's a fun movie, features Bobcat Goldthwait, Joe Flaherty, Joel Murray, and Curtis Armstrong. We ask why Goldthwait is funny, what's the deal with Demi Moore's hair, and what is up with William Hickey, who may or may not be in a Weekend-At-Bernies situtation.
When we saw this was playing at a local theater, we bent the rules so we could take in the story of how punk rock blew up a high school, thanks to the Ramones. A goofy, campy teensploitation movie produced by the great Roger Corman, this episode has everything from both Mary and Dennis singing, to an interview with the program director of the Ambler Theater, to a celebration of grindhouse, red-shifted film stock, and rock and roll.
This dark film about dirtbag kids who learn one of their group is a murderer is better than expected, with great performances from Keanu Reeves (one of his first films), Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck, Crispin Glover, and Dennis Hopper. A movie that zigs when you think it'll zag, it has none of the dayglo pop of other teen films from the 1980s, and feels closer to the world of the 1990s that Mary remembers.
Robert Townsend's showbiz satire on the limited roles for black actors in the 1980s is sharp, funny, and an early example of the kind of self-financed movies that would rise to prominence in the 1990s. Co-written and co-starring Keenen Ivory Wayans, who's own touches are all over this movie.
Summer means baseball, so we take on the sports comedy Major League, the crude, flawed, but often very comedy about a team set up to lose who goes all the way. We're talkin' baseball so much you might think this was an AM radio station.
Dennis finally gets to introduce Mary to a movie he loved as a kid, a video game space opera starring Robert Preston that lifts liberally from Arthurian legend.
We take a break from movies to welcome to the show a special guest, the writer, comedian, voice actor, and director Tom Scharpling from The Best Show with Tom Scharpling. Tom is one of the inspirations for our show, and we are so excited to finally welcome him.
His 2021 best-selling memoir, It Never Ends, is being released in paperback, and in celebration, there will be a 24-hour episode of The Best Show starting July 26th.
We talk with Tom about movies, the complications of the D.I.Y. ethos, the importance of R.E.M., and the strangeness of writing a memoir and remaking your life while the world is falling apart.
Part I of Starman vs The Last Star Fighter commenses with John Carpenter's story of a woman who falls in love with an alien who looks like her dead husband. We talk about the Voyager probes, alien invasion movies, Jeff Bridge's stunt-butt, and the 1983 Sixers.
Finishing up our Cage Match, we have a special guest! We are joined by Jon Solomon, DJ at WPRB and head of Comedy Minus One records, to discuss the LA-centric romantic comedy starring Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman. We talk about music, teen comedies, The Best Show, and what happens when a Punk Rock guy falls in love with a New Wave girl.
Jim Jarmusch's anthology film set in Memphis clears up a mystery for Mary, and Dennis is very excited to revisit this indie film which stars, among others, Joe Strummer, Steve Buscemi, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. We talk about the declining American Empire, racial strife, and some of the worst motels we've ever stayed at.
Round 3 of our Cage Match is this Francis Ford Coppola time travel comedy starring Kathleen Turner as a woman who wakes up as her teenage self in 1960 and has to decide whether she wants to stay with her future ex-husband, played by Nicolas Cage.
Round 2 of our Cage Match brings us a very dark... comedy? about a yuppie who thinks he's a vampire, resulting in one of Nicholas Cage's strangest performances. We talk about American Psycho, whether it's OK to eat bugs, and the erotic potential of hot yogurt. Look, it's a very odd movie.
This week is Round 1 in our Cage Match, wherein Nicholas Cage and Matthew Modine are two Philly kids who get sent to Vietnam and come back severely damaged. Mary talks a little too much about Cage's abs, way too much about the city of Philadelphia, and possibly not enough about birds.
This movie is bad, it plays into dumb racial stereotypes, it's crude, it features Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise drugging and kidnapping Farrah Fawcett for laughs, Jackie Chan is mostly wasted, and Dean Martin looks like he's about to die. But it's nowhere near the worst movie we've seen, and has a sort of obnoxious charm.
Get ready for 30 minutes of incohate rage as Mary and Dennis endure a movie about a rich white child buying a poor black man and forcing him to be his friend. Fun for the whole family. Starring Richard Pryor, Jackie Gleason, and Ned Beatty, and directed by Richard Donner.
This week we have a special guest, our good friend, the librarian Kate Eckert (@katoukate), to talk about the Japanese comedy Tampopo, a "ramen western" about a young widow and the truck driver who helps her become an expert ramen chef. We talk about food, sex, and old women who can't stop squeezing the merchandise.
This classic British gangster film is also a meditation on capitalism, crime, and the death of the British Empire. And weird as hell to watch post-Brexit. Featuring stunning performances from Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren, this film is easily one of the best we've seen for the show. Some come and listen to us talk about the IRA, gay mobsters, and how Remington Steel was not great.
We really enjoyed this romantic jungle adventure starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglass, and Danny DeVito--so much so, that this episode went on a little long. But when you're dealing with a surprise Robert Zemeckis film, that's gonna happen.
Mary had studiously avoided this Weird Al vehicle, convinced that his brand of parody music--not her thing at all--would turn her off to this movie. Is she right? Or is this a beloved cult movie that ultimately wins her over? Tune in as we talk about the nature of music in humor, the lost world of local television, and Dennis's History of America in the 20th century.
We were excited for this psychic comedy starring Jeff Goldblume, Cyndi Lauper, and Peter Falk, but folks, the vibes were bad.
Mary is finally sitting down to the only pre-1990s Disney film she's never seen. We talk about 1970s rural entertainment, the sad state of Disney Pictures at the time, and whether Mickey Rooney should've been cast at all.
It's our first anniversary, and to celebrate, we're watching the Canadian comedy Strange Brew, starring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as Bob and Doug McKenzie, the breakout characters from SCTV, who end up as the Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern of a sinister plot to take over the Elsinor Brewery.
There's several things to like in this comedy about a man down on his luck who ends up living with a rich family in Beverly Hills, but there's also something sour that doesn't sit right with us. We talk remakes, Venice Beach, jerk dogs, the problems with Whiggish History, and whether this house is a polycule.
This Eddie Murphy action-comedy about a Detroit detective navigating the wealthy enclave of Beverly Hills while investigating a friend's murder is an absolute blast. Come for the discussion of art market money laundering, stay for the ranting about Glenn Frey.
Part II of "Hey, which is this, Empire of the Sun or The Last Emperor?" concludes with Bernardo Bertolucci's epic biography of the last emperor of China, who wasn't exactly a great argument for the institution of monarchy.
Part 1 of "Wait, which movie is Empire of the Sun and which is The Last Emperor?" in which we watch Steven Spielberg's epic about a very young Christian Bale living out the worst possible version of Home Alone in Japanese-occupied Shanghai.
We were surprised by how much we enjoyed Richard Donner's medieval fantasy about a knight who spends his night as a wolf and a lady who spends her days as a hawk. We just wish the music was very, very differernt.
Things get very silly when Dennis tries to get Mary to watch this Rutger Hauer film that he loved as a kid.
"Indie Month" closes with a look at John Waters' breakthrough film Polyester, an homage to the "women's films" of the 1950s. We talk about kitsch, the suburbs, and Mary gets to gloat.
We watched Steven Soderbergh's breakthrough indie hit, and came away appreciating it as a fairly standard drama that dances around some ideas around intimacy, while not really surprising us much with its content--the title is far more salacious than the film itself.
This episode could've been two hours, because holy cow does Richard Linklater's breakthrough indie comedy provoke a lot of thought about the nature of work, generational angst, conspiratorial thinking, religion and pop culture, and whether withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy. For Dennis this was a trip down memory lane into his own Gen X youth, for Mary this was a real excavation of a lot of ideas, all wrapped up in a funny, thoughtful package.
Also, yeah, getting the "explicit" tag just because of a music cue we use.
Jim Jarmusch's Neo-noir-beatnik-comedy is a favorite film of Dennis's, and a staple of the 1980s indie film scene, so it's time for Mary to finally sit down and watch. Silly, stylized, and warm, "sad and beautiful" as one character says, it stars Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni as three men stuck in a Louisiana jail for accidental crimes who try to find a way to live with each other.
Our month of Christmas-themed movies wraps up with Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, a lushly-filmed, sometimes dark, deeply-moving family drama about a brother and sister whose lives fall apart when their father dies and their mother remarries. With allusions to Hamlet and Charles Dickens, it's a heavy one, but then, some of the best Christmas stories are.
It's an old-fashioned Christmas in the Smoky Mountains when Dolly Parton runs away from L.A. and ends up running afoul of a sleazy sheriff, a jealous witch, seven orphan, and Lee Majors as a a mountain man named Mountain Dan. It's a cornball affair, but very Christmassy.
Our Christmas-themed month continues with this not-exactly-Christmasy Japanese World War II movie starring David Bowie and set in a POW camp. However, this film about repressed desires, honor, toxic masculinity, and regret carries some potent themes, even if it's light on conventional Yuletide joy.
We're bending the rules a little here to bring you an early Muppets Christmas special, and one of the few Mary's never seen. Make some cocoa, curl up by the fire, and listen to us talk about the Muppets, John Denver, Jimmy Carter, vaudeville, Jack Benny, Old Time Radio, whether God has a wife, and more.
It's a Thanksgiving Miracle--we thought we'd seen this movie, but it turns out we hadn't, and now we know why it's a holiday classic. Is it John Hughes' best film? Maybe! Does it contain one of the funniest scenes in comedy? Arguably! And has travel in America actually gotten worse since the mid-1980s? DEFINITELY. So join Steve Martin, John Candy, and Mary and Dennis as we hit the road in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
It's an episode of unbridled enthusiasm as we take on Jonathan Demme's romantic-screwball-comedy-meets-domestic-crime-drama Something Wild, starring Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels, and Ray Liotta, and littered with music from David Byrne, John Cale, Laurie Anderson, and a memorable appearance by New Jersey's post-punk legends The Feelies playing a high school reunion. We fell in love with this movie before it was even over.
This British satire is half a good movie and half a ham-handed play for an American audience unfamiliar with the tv series this was based on. The part of the film that posits the prime minister of the UK is a dangerous madman is a not-bad homage to Doctor Strangelove, while the American plot involving Michael Richards as a master-of-disguise terrorist is pretty dire. But at least the movie features a deadpan Peter Cook, Alexei Sayle in a Hawaiian shirt, and Rik Mayal destroying a wax museum.
This is the notorious film that got Lisa Bonet thrown off The Cosby Show. Initially rated X for a scene that honestly is pretty tame by today's standards, it's a fascinating blend of noir and horror, starring Mickey Rourke as a private eye collecting on a debt for the Devil, played by Robert De Niro. It has some sketchy racial and religious elements, but overall is a stylish head-scratcher.
Halloween month comes to a close with this very silly movie that takes horror hostess Elvira from the boob tube to the big screen. It ain't high art, but it's a lot of fun.
In what is sure to become a Halloween tradition for us, we watch the comedy-horror film An American Werewolf in London and absolutely fall in love with it. Part gothic horror, part romance, part buddy-comedy, this is the second film we've watched from John Landis, and easily one of the best films for the podcast.
Spooky Month continues with our special guest, author and relationships specialist Alana Phelan (@hellolibrarian)! We sit down with Alana to watch the first Nightmare on Elm Street film. Will this be as quippy as we expect? Does the Simpsons parody spoil the ending? And just how is he killing these kids in their sleep? Find out on our latest episode.
Kicking off October's Spooky Month, it's The Witches of Eastwick, a comedy where Jack Nicholson's greasy ponytail is somehow able to pull down a harem that includes Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Directed by George Miller, who has one of the oddest filmographies for a guy with only nine feature films, and based on a novel by John Updike. It's a romp of a movie, so light some candles, pour some wine, and pull out your spellbooks for this.
We wrap up Back To School month with 1986's Real Genius. It's a PG Animal House meets War Games in this comedy about college students building a weapon for their professor only to realize the horror of what they're actually doing. Lightly satirical, with Val Kilmer as a Looney Tunes protagonist up against a William Atherton at his most arrogant. This movie was a really fun surprise for Mary, while confirming for Dennis that this is a better film than he remembered.
Folks, we had some problems with Hoosiers.
Will this be the episode that loses us listeners? Probably!
We went into this fearing a sleazy teensploitation skin flick; instead, it's funny, frank look at young people surviving high school and learning about sex and relationships, all set to a killer early 1980s soundtrack. It's also a real "hey, it's that guy!" kind of film, from new stars like Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, and Forest Whittaker, to character actors like Vincent Schiavelli, to the first film for Nicholas Cage. It was a real surprise, and one of the best movies we've seen yet for the podcast.
We're back with another Steve Martin film, this time his homage to the singing cowboy pictures of from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Unfortunately, he's working with John Landis on the backside of his directing heights, and we end up with a slightly-bloated mess, and that's even before tackling the sketchy themes of the movie. Still, it has some great music from co-writer (?!) Randy Newman.
And with that, Season 1 of MVM comes to an end! We are on a brief hiatus, and will be back in a week or two.
Timed to coincide with the current film The Green Knight, this episode has readings in Middle English, an increasingly-irate Mary expounding on the meanderings of medieval literature, and some truly terrible music. Medieval literature and Arthuriana is very much Mary's wheelhouse, so buckle in, and avoid any Sean Connerys you see carrying an axe.
David Byrne's mockumentary about a small Texas town, starring John Goodman, was a fun surprise--Dennis called it "Koyaanisqatsi as a comedy", and to Mary was a marriage of Wes Anderson and The Church of the SubGenius.
"They don't make 'em like that anymore" is a very tired sentiment, but it's been a while since we've seen a movie in theaters about working class girls coming of age, and this is a good one. Come for the dissing of Connecticut's pizza, stay for the mangled Antonio Gramsci references.
This space-western that never goes into space, starring nobody in particular, and featuring all the crisp cinematography of an episode of Airwolf, is easily the worst film we've watched for this podcast. There's a lot of spleen-venting in this episode--you've been warned.
This Amy Heckerling comedy starring Michael Keaton was a favorite film of Dennis's when he was younger--will it hold up to his own memories? Or will Mary be unable to see what's so funny about this gangster parody?
It's MTV meets Brave New World meets Rocky Horror meets the Bible in this 1980 musical extravaganza that we still can't make up our minds about, because wow, that ending really took us right out of it. And yet... we like it? We found so much to talk about whether this movie succeeds or fails that this episode is longer than our usual fair.
We had mixed feelings about this forgotten coming-of-age story set in 1963 Myrtle Beach, SC. The film is enjoyable, but a combination of Southern Pride and 1980s sexual politics left us a little unmoored.
CW: talking about an attempted sexual assault that happens in the film.
We went into 1980's Xanadu thinking "this is gonna be a bad movie", and folks, we were both very right and very wrong. Is the acting wooden? Is the plot almost too simple? Is the directing middling at best? Yes, yes, and yes. But is the music great? Is there plenty of dancing? Does it have Gene Kelly rollerskating? Oh, absolutely. Unfortunately, the disco-fever-dream revival of 1930s musicals was a still-born genre, one that very few people embraced, but it has definitely has two converts in Mary and Dennis.
Our first guest! Mary's sister Anne comes by to talk about 1985's Silverado, written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and starring Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Brian Dennehey, and on and on and on. By the 1980s, the Western was dead, but that wasn't going to stop Kasdan from indulging in a little nostalgia for the genre. And while neither Mary nor Dennis had ever seen it, the film intentionally hews close to Western tropes so much that it didn't really matter, we could see where this was all going.
Things get personal on this episode, which is a little shaggier than most. What happens when Mary decides to watch the beloved children's film My Neighbor Totoro, written and directed by the great Hayao Miyazaki, and is reminded of painful childhood memories? Well, it's not our funniest episode, but it's definitely our most emotional.
We go a little long on this one, but come on, it's John Carpenter's The Thing, one of the greatest sci-fi horror films of the last 50 years. The story of men stationed in Antarctica, trying to figure out which one of them is a shape-shifting alien, is a thrilling exercise in paranoia, where the audience is as much in the dark as the characters.
Sean Connery is a marshal investigating a rash of suicides in a space mining colony in this somewhat obscure 1981 sci fi film. Mary was pleasantly surprised by this story of corruption described as "High Noon in Space". Is this one of Connery's best films? Is this one of Peter Boyle's worst characters? All these questions and more.
We didn't know what to expect with this obscure comedy from 1981; little did we know we had on our hands one of the biggest bombs in film history. A friend of the show called it "Nashville meets Cannonball Run", and she wasn't wrong. Is it good? Is it bad? Yes.
We were left pretty astonished by Werner Herzog's epic adventure film about the world most reckless opera fan.
As an homage to film noir and classic Hollywood, this movie was built for Mary. As a Steve Martin-Carl Reiner comedy, it was built for Dennis. Two great tastes are pretty tasty together in the 1982 film that mixes and matches films from all over the studio system into a story of murder, Nazis, and java.
We really don't know what to make of David Lynch's space-opera adaptation of Frank Herbert's cult sci-fi novel Dune. As critic Nathan Rabin would ask, is it a Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success? Too long? Too short? And why in the world was Sting cast? We really never answer these questions, because we're too baffled by the whole experience. So come and experience Dune, starring Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Max von Sydow, Patrick Stewart, and many more in what the studios thought would be "Star Wars for Adults".
Who knew this screwball comedy starring Rosanna Arquette, Aiden Quinn, Mark Blum, and most famously Madonna, would turn out to be a real gem of a movie? Definitely not Mary and Dennis, who were pleasantly surprised. Sit back, dream of a different life, get amnesia, and enjoy a trip through a pre-Giuliani New York City.
Now updated with new music! For reasons!
Even Stephen King, who wrote and directed it, admits Maximum Overdrive is the worst film connected to his body of work. Do Mary and Dennis think he's right? Well, yeah, but only because Mary can't remember anything about the TV movie The Langoliers. Join Emilio Estévez, Yeardly Smith, and a mostly forgettable cast as they take on some very angry trucks and an extremely coked-up Stephen King.
What is there to say? One of the most famous "bad movies" ever made, and somehow Mary has never seen it, not even while flipping channels on cable, which is where everyone else encountered the Patrick Swayze masterpiece, which flopped in theaters.
Even though she grew up watching the show, this is Mary's first time seeing Tim Burton's first film, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Does its child-like star irritate, or is he the heir to Bugs Bunny? How much do we miss Phil Hartman? And just how many times can Mary say "aesthetics" before you want to stop listening? All this and more.
Did Cher totally deserve an Oscar for her performance? Is Nic Cage's performance turned to 11? Should Danny Aiello just stay in Sicily? Is this the best movie we've covered so far? Does the moon really hit your eye like a big pizza pie? The answers to these questions and more can all be found in this episode.
Mary muscles her way into Predator, and Dennis reminisces about the late, great premium cable channel PRISM. Also, choppers are gotten to.
In our first episode, Mary and Dennis tackle the 1980 workplace farce 9 to 5, starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman. It's a story of sex, revenge, and the power of collective action. It also completely missed Mary growing up, despite her mom apparently identifying pretty closely with the film.