Low Key: Recent Episodes
Aaron Lanton
Aaron Lanton, Keith Dennie, and Tim Molloy look at pop culture through a racial lens, focusing on the low-key things some people might miss to discuss their deeper meanings.
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COHERENCE, a 2013 sci-fi film from writer-director James Ward Byrkit, is a model of low-budget filmmaking.
As studios look for the next OBSESSION, they might want to see what's possible on a $50,000 budget, when scrappy filmmakers and performers imagine big.
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Welcome once again to the pod. This week, the guys review a regular ol' popcorn on your couch pirate movie, Amazon Prime's The Bluff. There's betrayal, blood-soaked action, and booty to be plundered, just like you'd expect.
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We share what we're excited to see in 2026, including Industry, The Pitt, They Will Kill You, and maybe — just maybe — Avengers: Doomsday.
But first, Aaron has some thoughts on Stranger Things.
And then team makes an announcement about Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride.
And we talk about shows that overstay their welcome — and some of the best shows we've ever seen, including Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, and The Righteous Gemstones.
Pictured: Myha'la in Industry Season 4.
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"Hippies are bad people who pretend to be good and punks are good people who pretend to be bad"
Photo from Being Eddie. Netflix
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Jim Henson meets Roald Dahl in THE WITCHES. Let's talk about whether it holds up, whether it would work for modern kids, and why we wouldn't mind watching it again and again and again.
A must-see if you love movies with dead parents, kids turning into mice, and of course... witches.
TLDR: "I love this movie."—Keith
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One of the greatest directors ever reunites with one of the greatest actors ever to make one of the most OK films
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A VERY spoiler-filled discussion of Zack Cregger's wonderful WEAPONS.
Please don't listen to this one without seeing the movie, OK?
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This episode, we talk about Hulu's very welcome revival of Mike Judge and Greg Daniel's King of the Hill, until Tim ruins everything with an obscene and inaccurate quotation from Silicon Valley.
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The Fantastic Two, Tim and Aaron, discuss the Fantastic Four, which, unlike Superman, provides pure escapism. But we like them both.
Here's Tim's article about this summer's comic book movies really embracing comic books.
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Also in this episode, we investigate: Is Jesus woke?
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Tyler Perry's Straw has a misleading title — because it isn't a straw that breaks the camel's back in the film about a single mom (Taraji P. Henson) driven to extremes, but an absolutely nightmarish event that is only revealed in the film's insane final act.
In this episode, Aaron, Keith and Tim talk about whether the movie takes place in hell, great movie twists and why they work — from Fight Club to The Sixth Sense — and the correct way to pronounce San Pedro.
We wrap up by praising Tubi's Flew'd Out and the works of fantasy author Brandon Sanderson.
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What is the message of Mountainhead? Aaron and Tim talk about the film as a condemnation of the gamification of everything in Jesse Armstrong's Succession successor.
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Murderbot is a security droid who is happy to just watch his shows, and so are we. Without being security droids.
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Sometimes we talk about movies that are a good hang. Elijah Bynum's Magazine Dreams is not one of them, but it is a fascinating watch with an astonishing performance by Jonathan Majors. At one point it looked like he could win an Oscar for the role — before legal troubles nearly ended his career. Now Magazine Dreams is part of a comeback attempt.
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We talk about the excellent of Sinners, the bad version of Sinners, and letting the right and wrong ones in.
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Due to various calamities we couldn't find time to watch the same show or movie this week, so instead Aaron, Keith and Tim are just listing off a bunch of cool stuff they like and recommend. We also discuss great Disney sequels, the Righteous Gemstones, hip-hop Percocet era, and why Frozen 2 is, no kidding, the wokest movie ever.
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THE SUBSTANCE is almost a perfect partner to the last film we discussed, A DIFFERENT MAN. It's about aging and beauty standards, but also the kindnesses and harms we do to our future selves.
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A Different Man stars Sebastian Stan as Edward, an aspiring actor with neurofibromatosis who, through a new procedure, gets the face he's always wanted. But then he meets a different man, Oswald (Adam Pearson) who thrives in a play based on Edward's previous life — and makes Edward question everything about himself.
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We like Creature Commandos, and are endlessly amused that it is the first project under DC Studios leader James Gunn to be canon in the new DC Universe.
We also have some thoughts on the weird relationship between Batman and Robin.
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We also plan to rewatch The Wiz sometime soon.
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Has James Patterson already used TRIPLE CROSS as the title of one of his dozens of Alex Cross novels? We don't know. If not, Mr. Patterson, it's all yours. On this episode of LOW KEY we talk about DC cop/psychologist Alex Cross, played in the new Amazon Prime series CROSS by the always good Aldis Hodge. We think it has crossover appeal.
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Woman of the Hour starts out with a deliciously trash concept: a woman (Anna Kendrick) goes on a dating show where one of the three bachelors is a serial killer.
But it takes a serious turn when almost every man in sight fails as a human being — except for George Elliott.
We talk this episode about how to be a real man.
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No cute hook here. This is just an awesome movie.
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We discuss the new City of God: The Fight Rages On, a series sequel to the iconic 2002 film about violent kids growing up in the desperate slums of Rio De Janeiro. The kids are all grown up, and some are actually doing OK — at least in the pilot.
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This week we talk about HIT MAN, which Richard Linklater and Glen Powell wrote together, and which Linklater directs and Powell stars in.
We also reference Quentin Tarantino saying Linklater's DAZED AND CONFUSED, released more than 30 years ago, is a great hang — and whether HIT MAN is, too.
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We have a multitude of opinions about Godzilla Minus One, which has been pretty much universally praised.
Also, Aaron explains the Act 3 problem that plagues every Godzilla movie.
And we scold the critics for being scolds.
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In keeping we the two sides seen by the protagonist of The Sympathizer, we offer the second of our two episodes this week.
The Sympathizer is a brilliant absurdist nightmare. Marlon Brando fans may be especially intrigued.
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Enjoy two back-to-back episodes — one about Baby Reindeer and one about The Sympathizer — because Tim forgot to post Baby Reindeer. In this episode, we talk about missed connections, stalkings, empathy. and low-key helpful small-town cops.
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What happens when you give jail inmates more control over their lives?
Let's poor some hooch, light up some coffee cigarettes, and talk about Netflix's Unlocked: A Jail Experiment.
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This episode, your pod pals Keith, Aaron and Tim talk about Netflix's the Three Body Problem, how the Game of Thrones guys love killing everyone you love, and how weird it is when supermodels are cast as cops and EMTs.
We like the Three Body Problem, based on the novel by Liu Cixin that Tim is not sophisticated enough to understand.
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In this episode we talk about our love of the brilliant X-Men 97, dream re-cast the 2000 X-Men movie, and pitch the greatest comic-book story that will never, ever be made.
We also imagine a solution to the Logan-Scott-Jean love triangle, talk about past great animated shows, and envision a plan for world peace inspired by Magneto.
Come to me, my X-Men (fans).
P.S. Tim was wrong about X-Men #168 being the first issue he ever bought. It was #185.
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Netflix's Damsel flips the typical woman captured by beast narrative on its head, and lets the women take the lead but is it successful? Aaron and Keith talk about Millie Bobby Brown's performance as a fantasy heroine, why Damsel might have the best dragon CGI ever, and the oddness of so many reviewers focusing on gender while completely missing the impactful Grendel parallels for the main antagonist.
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Is the Dune 2 worth the hype, or does the adaptation fail to build on the original film's strengths? Aaron, Keith and Tim talk through the challenges of watching science fiction epics, why the Dune series is flipping the typical hero formula, and how Dune 2 is likely to influence future Hollywood projects.
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This episode we talk about Griselda, the story of a woman who can sell drugs and kill people as well as any man.
Tim loves it, Keith has some reservations, Aaron finds some things goofy.
Also, since we recorded this conversation, the lawsuit filed by Griselda's son has been settled. Hooray!
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Writer-director Issa Lopez enlists The Greatest Actress Ever, Jodie Foster, and rising star Kali Reis to reinvent HBO's gloriously gloomy crime series.
Also: Check out Sonya Alexander's terrific interview with Issa Lopez for Moviemaker Magazine right here.
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This is a true story.
We discuss the first four episodes of the magnificent Fargo Season 5.
Also here's the deal with the nipple rings.
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Did people who got offended by No Hard Feelings actually see No Hard Feelings?
We also talk about Hall & Oates, Nelly Furtado, ?uestlove and the youth of today
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This episode, we talk about how Low Key Season 2 is the Wire Season 2 of Disney+ shows.
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We talk about Netflix's live-action pirate adventure series One Piece, and whether it bodes well for the future of live-action anime adaptations.
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We dig into the space procedural Ahsoka, the 400th Disney+ Star Wars series.
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 finally puts our favorite, Rocket Raccoon, at center stage, even if he spends most of the movie asleep. We're divided on the latest from the great James Gunn, but that leads to a discussion of our favorite superhero movies ever and which comic books we wish we could adapt.
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We think Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux are very good in The White House Plumbers, and we realize the writers had a very difficult job to do, and we love and respect all writers everywhere. But this just wasn't our thing.
Also, Aaron wonders why there are so many Nazis in our films and TV shows, because fuck those guys.
Finally, Tim recommends the excellent 2004 mockumentary Confederate States of America by Kevin Willmott.
And this is maybe Keith's least-favorite conversation ever.
Prepare to be delighted by Rye Lane, a film about two people who've recently broken up with others and make a quick connection.
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Swarm, the new serial killer social satire from Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, stars Dominique Fishback in an astonishing performance. We're into it.
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The new Hulu film Bruiser is about 14-year-old Darious (Jalyn Hall) who has a seemingly happy family. But when he begins hanging out with a mysterious local man named Porter (Trevante Rhodes), his parents (Shamier Anderson and Shinelle Azorah) warn him to stop, and things turn violent.
The more we talked about the film, by director Miles Warren, the more we came to appreciate its subtle and nuanced characterizations, and the questions they raise. We ended up talking a lot about what it truly means to be a father.
This week we talk about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a movie that is weightless in every sense. We wanted to like it but the movie made that impossible.
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This week Aaron, Keith and Tim talk about the simple, well-crafted joys of Poker Face, which follows an ex-gambler (Natasha Lyonne) who solves murders as she flees the mob. It's just high-stakes enough to keep you in the game, but doesn't stress you out with constant drama. We like it.
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Let's talk about the terrific and fun M3GAN, where the murders are the funny part and the points about kids and technology are terrifying.
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Let's talk about the impressively structured, simultaneously complicated and obvious Rian Johnson mystery. Keith calls it "a treat to watch."
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In this episode, we discuss the new Hulu series Welcome to Chippendales, and why TV shows and movies have replaced fellatio with cunnilingus.
Also, we think Welcome to Chippendales is great.
We discuss James Gunn's new Disney+ one-off, the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, whether Vol. 3 looks good, and whether Drax has gotten too dumb.
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Spoilers abound as we talk about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Everyone obviously made the best of a terrible tragedy. That said, did [spoiler] have to die? Why didn't [spoiler] tell Shuri about [spoiler]? And could [spoiler] really fight as well as she does? And when does all this take place, anyway?
Werewolf by Night is an enjoyable little flick you can watch
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Kid Cudi is the driving creative force about the charming musical/comedy/romance Entergalactic, featuring a voice cast that includes Jessica Williams, Timothee Chalamet and of course Mr. "Day 'n' Night" himself. We liked it.
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A pandemic rages, intergenerational resentments simmer, and secret sex and horrific violence abound.... in 1918. We talk about Ti West's masterful Pearl.
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Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.
We're impressed with many things about Hulu's much-praised Predator prequel Prey, starring Amber Midthunder as a young Comanche woman who takes on an intergalactic hunter... who should have taken her much more seriously.
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Listen to this one and we will pelt you with filth and treat you with contempt; we will make a spectacle of you. Yep, this is the episode where we discuss NOPE, the latest from Jordan Peele, whose work brought your hosts Aaron, Keith and Tim together in the first place. So how does NOPE compare to GET OUT and US? Listen in and see.
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In a historic first, three people talk for an hour about Stranger Things without mentioning Kate Bush once.
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The director of Top Gun: Maverick! The star of Thor! The brilliant novelist George Saunders! The screenwriters of Deadpool! These extraordinarily talented people come together in Spiderhead, a totally fine movie.
On this episode Aaron, Keith and Tim discuss:
Love vs. lust
A Clockwork Orange
How it's never OK to leave a baby in a car
And so much more!
Three minority college students bar hopping adventure is cut short before it even begins when a young white girl is found passed out on the floor of their rented house. Concerned about the worst possible scenario with police officers, they take the situation into their own inebriated hands and the emergency goes from really bad to worst.
Keith, Tim, and Aaron talk about the stand out acting performances, comparisons to other coming-of-age comedies, and the worthwhile, bold choices for the final act.
Emergency is available now at Amazon Prime.
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Apollo 10 1/2 takes us through a fictional space mission taken by a young boy to help NASA astronauts land on the moon by taking a smaller prototype for a measly test walk on the moon. Along the way, our now much older narrator gives a slice of 60s Americana from his perspective, warts and all.
Keith, Tim, and Aaron talk about the use of animated rotoscoping, targeting films for older demographics, and the effectiveness of non-linear story telling in this nostalgic review.
Windfall is about a quick theft going awry when a house burglar comes face to face with the billionaire husband and wife who own the luxurious estate. Keith, Aaron and Tim chat about the awkward humor, if they bought the choices character's made at the conclusion, and more.
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Fresh is about meeting the perfect guy after terrible first dates and horrible run-ins with weirdos on dating apps. Saying more would ruin the experience.
Check it out if you haven't already and the join us for a discussion about one of the great early surprises of 2022.
Fresh is available now at Hulu (watch here).
After watching the film, check out the spoiler-filled interview by Movie Maker with Fresh director Mimi Cave.
This week on the Low Key podcast, Aaron Lanton and Keith Dennie are joined by guest extraordinaire Sam (Sam Said Itand The Game Raven Reviewpodcasts) to talk about what makes The Batman a worthy successor, the satisfaction of watching the hero make mistakes in his second year, and where this movie ranks all-time among Batman films.
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We take a look at HBO Max's newest film straight to streaming Kimi, now known as agoraphobics' favorite movie of all-time.
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We review the Kristen Bell parody thriller The Woman Across the Street From the Girl in the Window, a Netflix series so good we start talking about a bunch of other movies we can barely remember the names of.
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Spoilers abound as we discuss Jane Campion's masterful Western/Hitchcockian thriller The Power of the Dog. It's the rare movie that turns out at the end to be a completely different movie — and even in a completely different genre — than we thought at the beginning.
We explore questions like:
—who or what "the dog" of the title is
—performative masculinity
—whether there's a bad guy
—Peter's sexuality
—whether Rose was ever good at piano
We hope you enjoy listening this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it.
Don't Look Up is a divisive movie, and your hosts are appropriately divided. Keith found parts of it funny but overall found it all too unbelievable, while Aaron and Tim embrace the absurd — or is it? — metaphor at the center of the film.
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8-Bit Christmas features Neil Patrick Harris as a modern-day dad telling his daughter the very '80s story of his quest for a Nintendo. It's packed with knowing '80s references like the Cabbage Patch Kid crisis and deep cuts like the infamous Billy Ripken "f--- face" card, and owes obvious debts to the '80s classics A Christmas Story and The Princess Bride.
Tim, a child of the '80s, and Keith and Aaron, children of the '90s, have different levels of enthusiasm for the HBO Max film: Keith finally asks Tim: Are you maybe a little too close to this material?
But this is a fun conversation that veers merrily into why dads don't build treehouses anymore, the best dumb Christmas movies, and, of course, true meaning of the holidays. Merry Christmas, f--- face.
In by far our favorite episode, we take a break from talking about movies other people made and talk about "The Moment" — a thoughtful and moving romance written and directed by your very own Low Key co-host, Keith Dennie!
Joining us is "The Moment" producer Charles W. Bush, who helped bring the film to life. Charles and Keith talk about every element of the film, from Keith's grounded, emotional script to a mini-crisis caused by a theft at a key point in the production — and how "The Moment" team worked together to bring the film to the screen.
The newish Netflix action film Kate stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an assassin in Japan, working for a mentor played by Woody Harrelson. It's full of tropes — the last job, the assassin who bonds with a young woman — but they worked for us.
It's got bright lights, rampant anime influences, and great music. We just wish there was a little less backstory and a little more of Kate fighting Yakuza henchmen.
We start this episode by talking about why we love Disney+'s What If, which scrambles and tweaks our favorite Marvel stories to imagine how they might have gone a little differently. The, inspired by What If, we think about the many directions into which the MCU could go — how will the X-Men come into play? What's up with the Spideyverse? And which of our predictions have come true so far?
Then Tim makes his silly case for why Tom Cruise should play Wolverine.
This episode: Paper Tigers! Featuring very special guest Sam from the Sam Said It podcast.
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James Gunn's The Suicide Squad doesn't give its characters much plot armor — that enchanted substance, created by corporations and screenwriters, that protects bankable characters from dying, no matter what.
Will Bloodsport (Idris Elba) make it through the mission alive? Will Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie)? Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnamon)? Nothing is guaranteed, and it's no spoiler to say some of the characters we like most don't make it out of The Suicide Squad alive. Spoiler alert: The movie's called The Suicide Squad.
We talk about how the scarcity of plot armor makes The Suicide Squad far more compelling than most comic-book movies — as well as the state of DC movies in general.
Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in The Last Mercenary, a new Netflix French film about a master-of-disguise mercenary named The Mist (Van Damme) who comes out of hiding when a bureaucratic error threatens the safety of his long-lost son. There's also a race to keep something called The Big Mac from falling into the wrong hands. But it's so much more needlessly complicated than that.
The Last Mercenary makes you ask all the wrong questions you should be asking during an action movie, including: Could I beat up all these characters?
A bold decision by Kevin Smith in the new Netflix series Masters of the Universe: Revelations has angered some fans of the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. We talk about how the decision actually solves a big problem with He-Man — and share a personal theory about why Adam has been less than honest with Teela for the last 40 years or so.
There are also lots of '80s and '90s-focused side discussions this episode about Sonic the Hedgehog, Sailor Moon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and everyone's favorite Saturday morning cartoon, Shirt Tails.
The very prolific Steven Soderbergh takes Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm, Julia Fox, Amy Seimetz, and many more top actors through a complicated scheme in 1950s Detroit, when society and the auto industry are on the brink of major change.
All that time you've spent reading up on fuel emission standards will finally be rewarded.
Summer of Soul, the directorial debut from Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, takes us back to Harlem in 1969 for a series of concerts that included a who's who of brilliant Black artists, from Stevie Wonder to Nina Simone to Sly and the Family Stone to Mahalia Jackson, among many, many more.
Tim, Aaron and Keith had pretty different reactions to the film, which almost never came to be: For more than 50 years, the footage languished, rejected by white executives who didn't think there would be a wide audience for a film about "the Black Woodstock."
We also talk about the unrest in 1969 compared to the racial dynamics in America today, and why the George Floyd murder captured people's attention — at least for a time — when so many others didn't.
Also: Tim wrote this about why Jimi Hendrix couldn't play the Harlem Cultural Festival, and Keith is sick of so many movies taking place in New York and L.A.
In this episode, dads Aaron and Tim and non-dad Keith discuss the Kevin Hart Netflix comedy Fatherhood, about a dad struggling to raise his very young daughter alone. We talk about diapers, dumb preschools, what the first steps look like, and lots of other dad stuff, and what we love and fear about raising kids.
Also: Shoutout to a notorious Memphis roller coaster, the perfect metaphor for parenthood.
At some point last week, everyone watching Loki collectively decided the Time-Keepers were full of shit. For Keith and Tim, co-hosts of the Low Key podcast, that moment occurred in this episode, when co-host Aaron broke it all down for them.
We also talk about Kang the Conquerer and some other fun theories.
Sweet Tooth is your typical coming of age tale about a post-apocalyptic, pandemic scorched Earth with a human-deer hybrid kid searching for his lost mother in the (mostly) lawless Western United States - average Netflix stuff, right?
The story from the show differs greatly in some aspects from the Vertigo comic book of the same name. The changes aren’t as drastic as The Walking Dead where we witness several seasons of new characters, but Sweet Tooth’s source material is actually much darker than what we see in the Netflix series. This doesn’t mean Sweet Tooth is devoid of shocking moments and troubling realizations. Scenes dealing with suspected viral infection are mundane and horrific simultaneously since it feels like these outcomes would also feel natural in our world if a pandemic were ever this catastrophic.
This week on the Low Key podcast, Aaron Lanton and Keith Dennie are joined by guest extraordinaire Sam (“Sam Said It” podcast) to talk about why the show works, how adults coped with the apocalypse, and what we expect from Season 2.
Sweet Tooth is available now on Netflix.
M.O.D.O.K. stands for Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing. Is he also designed to be good subject for a Hulu stop-motion comedy? We talk this episode about whether the brainchild of Patton Oswalt and friends can sustain a show. We agree on at least one thing: the look of M.O.D.O.K. is absolutely great.
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Those Who Wish Me Dead, the awesomely titled new thriller from Taylor Sheridan, stars Angelina Jolie as a smokejumper who must protect a boy with valuable secrets from a pair of assassins.
Does it work? We're divided this week, in large part because we aren't sure if the MacGuffin at the center of the film works. (A MacGuffin, of course, is a plot device that serves no real purpose except to move things along.)
What we do agree on is the cast is great and the fire sequences are spectacular.
Also this episode: We'll explain to anyone saying "what the hell is a smokejumper" exactly what that means.
The Outside Story, directed by Casimir Nozkowski, defies the rule that films need to be high-stakes. It's the tale of an introverted editor (Brian Tyree Henry) who gets locked out of his apartment and is forced to spend a few hours... outdoors. We liked it.
Some critics are mad at this small, kind-hearted movie for not being about police brutality or the living wage, and we gently recommend that those critics go for a nice walk outside.
Here's the article that inspired our discussion of the film.
Invincible, from Amazon Prime, is the work of a super team. Created by The Walking Dead mastermind Robert Kirkman, produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who have developed a spectacular track record), and voiced by A-listers led by JK Simmons and recent Oscar nominee Steven Yeun, it's the most impressive cartoon we've seen in a damn long time. There are many reasons we consider if the superhero Game of Thrones.
We also talk about the breaking news that occurred a few hours before this episode: A new report on the search for a Black Superman, and all the interesting reactions to it.
This week, we cover why this year's Oscars were weird, whether movies are doomed, and how The Falcon and the Winter Soldier continues a Marvel tradition of murderers with perfectly reasonable ideas.
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In the Oscar-nominated short film Two Distant Strangers,a young Black man (Joey Bada$$) finds himself trapped in a hellish time loop, relentlessly targeted by a racist white cop.
The film is written by Emmy winner Travon Free, who directs with Martin Desmond Roe. Free says the film is meant to illustrate the exhausting, horrific repetition of police killings of unarmed Black people. (You can listen to his interview over at the MovieMaker podcast.)
Keith talks in this episode about how watching Two Distant Strangers reminded him of the emotional death he's felt too many times before, after past police killings.
We also talk about police who kill and get away with it, whether there's any point in talking with racists, and how real events in the past week — including Derek Chauvin's trial for killing George Floyd — prove the film's point.
Concrete Cowboy is a coming of age story with cowboys but also with Black people in Philly; maybe not the combination you were expecting. The film pulls off most of what it intends to do, including one of the better story arcs for estranged parents seeking to help their child through a difficult time of their life. And surprisingly, there are a ton of parallels in narrative structure to the award-winning movie Nomadland that we discuss in detail.
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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, from showrunner Malcolm Spellman, builds on our nostalgia for buddy movies like Lethal Weapon 2. But it also offers a glimpse at what might have been if HBO had moved forward with Confederate, a proposed show from the creator of Game of Thrones that Spellman was to have worked on. Spellman and his team have managed to include real-world racial struggles and nuance in a show about super soldiers.
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When you think of garbage, don't think of Coming 2 America: We very much enjoyed the Coming to America sequel, despite the debate around the film and quibbles with the Zamundan system of succession. If you miss this episode you'll also miss out on some solid recommendations for underrated Wesley Snipes films.
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In awards-season darling Nomadland, Frances McDormand plays a woman named Fern who takes to the open road when her husband — and town — dies.
We talk about what Fern wants, whether the movie should be harder on American businesses, and some interesting similarities between Nomadland and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
I Care a Lot is about a crooked legal guardian (Rosamund Pike) who makes a living stripping seniors of all their worldly possessions. Things go great (or terribly, if we're talking about morality) until she targets Jennifer Peterson (Diane Wiest), who is connected to the worst person you could ever cross (Peter Dinklage).
The film has gotten good reviews, but criticism from viewers who don't like movies about people they don't like. We also talk about double standards around bad onscreen men like Walter White and bad onscreen women like the protagonist of I Care a Lot.
Keith, Aaron and special guest Sam from the Sam Said It podcast discuss Judas and the Black Messiah, starring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield.
Believe the marketing — the protagonist is federal informant William O’Neal and not the groundbreaking leader he got assassinated, Fred Hampton.
Malcolm and Marie is a movie about a tense, revealing argument between a budding filmmaker and an aspiring actress after his critically acclaimed directorial debut.
The premise sounds tame on the surface but the film goes in unexpected directions and features an acting masterclass between people in front of the camera - John David Washington and Zendaya.
Check out this episode for a spoiler filled review and hilarious discussions on poor judgment during relationship spats.
Three episodes into WandaVision, the guys discuss what seems to be happening so far, and share some theories. Is Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) controlling everything?
it seems like we get some explanations in the fourth episode, out this weekend, so we're eager to see if our guesses prove correct.
Now that everyone has had time to see Pieces of a Woman — or at least find out what the astonishing Kornél Mundruczó film is about — we can discuss Vanessa Kirby's Oscar-calibre turn as a woman whose pregnancy ends tragically.
Please rate, review and subscribe, follow us on IG @thelowkeypod, and check out our interview with Mundruczó over at the MovieMaker podcast.
Regina King's directorial debut One Night in Miami imagines a conversation between Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Cassius Clay... who will soon become Muhammad Ali. We talk on this episode about the expectations of Black stars who are often expected to be activists as well as celebrities. And, since we recorded this on the last night of the Trump presidency, we talk about how Black leaders have often been the ones to make America live up to its own stated principles.
We're joined by special guest Sam from the Sam Said It podcast — check out the podcast and follow him on @SamSaidItDFW.
And you can check out MovieMaker's Regina King interview here.
Pixar's Soul is the story of a jazz musician named Joe (Jamie Foxx) who is on the brink of achieving his dreams... when he falls in a manhole and dies. From there, he meets 22 (Tina Fey) an entitled being who doesn't want to be alive.
We start off rooting for Joe as he desperately clings to life. But then we're supposed to root for 22. And then their interests come into conflict.
Where should our loyalties lie?
On the last Low Key podcast of the year, Keith Dennie, Aaron Lanton and Tim Molloy talk about the deceptively straightforward Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe and based on the play by August Wilson.
We talk about what we thought of Chadwick Boseman's final performance, what the film says about religion, and if there's a Marxist argument at work in the story of arguing musicians one hot day in 1927.
Like every episode of the Low Key podcast, this one is good.
In The Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed plays a heavy metal drummer who suddenly loses his hearing. You share his nightmarish sense of his entire life disappearing, along with his sense of sound.
Director Darius Marder teaches us how to watch and listen to the film, with completely immersive and innovative use of sound. But it's also a spectacularly well-crafted script, and beautifully-acted film.
We liked it! Keith and Aaron discuss the film, but missing co-host Tim agrees with everything they said.
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Lovers Rock, the magnificent second film in Steve McQueen's Small Axe series, takes viewers inside a 1980 house party filled with young British and Caribbean people, looking for love.
As the party unfolds, we realize this small get-together, DJ'd by the immaculate Mercury Sound System, is fraught with politics: Why don't these Black young people feel welcome at clubs? Why can't they wander too far from the house without being accosted by local hoodlums? And what are the sexual and class dynamics at play?
This makes it sound like Lovers Rock is a heavy-handed message movie — and it's the opposite. Steve McQueen has the lightest, deftest touch, and lets the story flow so freely you barely detect the film's arc until it's swept over you. Lover's Rock is a seductive mix of emotions as smoothly delivered as the songs the Mercury crew spins all night.
If you've thought about making a movie, but really don't know where to start, start here.
Every week on Low Key, we talk about TV shows and movies other people made. Except this week! Keith Dennie, one of your co-hosts, wrote a script in quarantine, got a crew and actors together, and finished principle photography. His film, The Moment, is about a young woman named Logan (Randell Robertson) whose humdrum relationship is threatened by an intriguing new man (Tony Williams).
Keith talks about how COVID-19 motivated him to make the film, and how he handled every aspect of it, from the dialogue to finding actors to talking them through scenes and editing. He also talks about how doing people favors will come around, giving special thanks to producer Charles W. Bush of Appointed Productions, first AD Sheran Keaton, and DP Michael Bradley.
We're also sending out love to the Lanton family, and look forward to Aaron Lanton's return!
The Queen's Gambit stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon, an orphan who becomes a 1960s chess prodigy — and addict. In this episode we talk about whether child prodigies are real or an exaggerated phenomenon, nature v. nurture, and the Netflix series' approach to gender and race. Also we try to imagine a world without Street Fighter.
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His House is a haunted house story where the characters have a good reason for not leaving the house: If they do, they'll be returned to the horrors of tribal violence in their native South Sudan.
Set in the United Kingdom, His House follows the story of Rial and Bol Majur (played by Wunmi Mosaku and Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù), a married couple seeking asylum to escape the horrors of tribal violence.
The debut feature from Remi Weekes is scary, unexpectedly funny, and provocative — it inspires a talk among Keith, Aaron and Tim about our own immigration policy, and the ways people dehumanize each other.
If you like this episode, check out Tim interview with Remi Weeks at the MovieMaker Interviews podcast.
Horror. Science fiction. Non-fiction. Fantasy. Adventure. Coming of age. War. A lot of shows have a hard time executing any sole genre. Lovecraft Country, which just wrapped its first season on HBO, blends all of these together at once and still sticks the landing more often than not.
On this week's episode of the Low Key podcast, we discuss all things Lovecraft Country, including the very mixed legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, whether contemporary music works for shows set in the past, and how unfinished character arcs kept this season from being an all-timer.
The new British horror film Hostsseems designed to provoke people, with a mix of long, slow buildups and sudden, ghastly unpleasantness. This is never better exemplified than in a dinner scene that replaces Chekhov's gun with a hammer, very unsubtly.
Hosts features a classic setup: a family invites a neighborhood couple over for Christmas dinner. But an unknown entity has taken over the neighbors' bodies and forces them to act out murderous violence. Hosts weaves together elements of several horror sub-genres, including home invasion, possession, familial violence, and supernatural mystery.
Does it work? We discuss.
Hosts is directed by Adam Leader and Richard Oakes and stars Neal Ward, Nadia Lamin, Frank Jakeman, Samantha Loxley, and Lee Hunter.
Today we talk about The Boys, Amazon's anti-superhero story.
Season 1 used superheroes to represent police, military, sports stars and Hollywood celebrities and explore blind hero worship. Season 2 delves into the dirty underside of manufactured heroism with a character named Stormfront (Aya Cash) who uses memes to gain fame and try to steal the superhero group The Seven from its leader, Homelander (Anthony Starr), a kind of demented cross between Superman and Captain America.
There are Nazis, a BDSM relationship between Stormfront and Homelander that involves lasers, and so, so many exploding heads.
Today's episode is about Residue, the impressionistic debut from Merawi Gerima.
The award-winning film, which just premiered on Netflix, follows Jay, a young filmmaker who returns from Los Angeles to his hometown of Washington, DC and finds that white people are taking over his neighborhood, disrespecting the Black residents they're pushing out.
We talk about the challenging pace of the movie, its unconventional use of offscreen voices, and its complicated presentation of Jay's motivations.
Keith and Aaron also talk about their experiences with gentrification in Memphis, and Tim discusses his white interloping.
We almost talked about Cuties this episode and decided to do Residue instead. You're welcome, everybody.
Hulu's new TV show 'Woke' follows the story of black cartoonist Keef Knight's "woke" awakening after a brush with police brutality leads him to re-evaluate his relationship with art and social critique. Also, inanimate objects are now talking to him about embracing his blackness.
It's a weird concept with great ideas, but 'Woke' makes some of the same mistakes it means to shed a light on. Keith and Aaron discuss in one of the most contentious episodes of the pod yet.
We talk about 1BR, the little horror movie that could... unseat Project Power as the top movie on Netflix. It's a story of utopian societies, utilitarianism, and keeping your cat close. Plus, Aaron and Keith recount their experience with a charismatic religious leader who eavesdropped on their conversation at the International House of Pancakes.
f you like this episode, check out our interview with 1BR producer Alok Mishra and writer-director David Marmor. And read Alok's piece for MovieMaker about the insane misadventures that went into making the film.
This episode, we talk about how Chadwick Boseman kept history alive with roles from Jackie Robinson to James Brown to Thurgood Marshall — and how Black Panther changed everything for movies.
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Project Power, the latest Netflix action-adventure hit, has a new spin on super powers: What if a pill could make you outrageously powerful — for just five minutes?
The film by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, written by The Batman co-writer Mattson Tomlin, stars a trio of stellar actors: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback.
But it also raises a question about the current action movie emphasis on universe-building: How can a movie tell a self-enclosed story while also hinting at the endless sequels and spinoffs to come? Can a movie do too good a job of universe-building, to the point that its main story feels incomplete?
We liked Project Power well enough, don't get us wrong. But we wondered at times if it was doing too much... or not enough. It definitely gave us a lot to talk about.
Shirley is about the brilliant American Gothic author Shirley Jackson, whose mid-20th century work has influenced many of the creators we admire today. Shirley specifically dramatizes the period that Jackson wrote the novel Hangsaman, by introducing a young, recently married couple into her home. Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman, a literary critic and university professor, provide the couple room and board as the young husband seeks university tenure.
In exchange, Rose, the young wife, acts as a daily helper to Jackson who is struggling to write her book or finish chores around the home, let alone come up with a galvanizing idea to write her next great piece of fiction.
The set up is straightforward but the execution is anything but.
The lead for a superhero film has to be in phenomenal shape, capable of imposing criminals with their physical presence - or do they? Robert Pattinson, the newest actor to take on the role of Batman in the upcoming 2021 film, adamantly disagrees. In an interview with GQ conducted in April 2020, Pattinson made the case that anyone advocating for working out at all times is “part of the problem.”
Presumably, his conviction against exercise is about the pressure to have the perfect physique in a capitalist, image driven society that makes us obsessed with striving for unattainable goals. Detractors would say he simply doesn’t want to work out. This episode of the Low Key podcast begins with a rant arguing the latter.
Today’s episode of the Low Key pod covers Beyonce’s visual album Black Is King, a re-envisioning of the classic Lion King tale through the talent and vision of black folks across the globe. In fact, each song for this project was part of Disney’s CGI-live action 2019 Lion King remake, but Black Is King adds additional layers and textures to each rendition by introducing a wide array of African people, tradition, and modern experience. Some audiences will be bewildered and others will not be able to find the words to explain why this is such an important piece of art beyond typical rating critique.
Black Is King is streaming now on Disney Plus.
At the end of the first episode of Netfix's The Business of Drugs, host Amaryllis Fox says to the camera:
"Legalization may seem pretty extreme to most Americans. But as long as the demand continues to climb, and the prices remain astronomically high because of no legal competition, I can't help wonder whether legalization and regulation is the only real option, and prohibition is just an illusion to make us all feel good."
Humans have used substances to induce soberless states since the beginning of time, but The Business of Drugs breaks down how our shared global habit is causing chaos for forgotten people. On this episode of Low Key, we talk about destigmatizing addiction, how poverty fuels drug markets, and whether legalization would help.
In this episode we explore Netflix's Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado, about a Puerto Rican TV astrologer who rose from humble beginnings to become a sequin-caped inspiration to millions.
With his distinctive look, aura of mystery — especially about his sexuality — and ability to blend many religious beliefs into a medley of optimism, Walter Mercado gave hope to the hopeless — until an ugly legal dispute yanked him from the air and cost him control of his own carefully cultivated image.
:45: Our late-night infomercial memories
3:00: Is the Michael Jordan-approved The Last Dance real journalism? Is Walter Mercado getting the Michael Jordan treatment?
5:45: "Celebrities nowadays are derivatives of celebrities back in the day."
5:50: How Walter Mercado was like Michael Jackson and Prince
7:05: About that psychic phone line...
7:50: How is Walter Mercado different from a televangelist?
8:50: "You just can't swindle a swindler"
10:00: Let's talk about Walter Mercado and his manager's relationship
11:45: Zodiac signs
12:40: "What's the difference between a Walter Mercado and a Tony Robbins?"
15:00: Tim has the same religious beliefs as Walter Mercado: "No one has a monopoly on God"
18:00: "He had a much better life than most people have"
24:00: A Billy Dee Williams story (and here's the background on the gender-fluid story)
27:00: Another excellentfamous-person story
30:55: "The only person I ever saw solve racism was Prince"
31:50: "Netflix, again, coming through on the diversity point before it was fucking cool. ... They've been on this train."
33:15: Netflix's $120 million donation to HCBUs
36:00: "I have an appreciation for any man that dresses up like a wizard"
Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado is now streaming on Netflix.
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Based on a comic book by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández,The Old Guard asks the question: What if the X-Men, but everyone is Wolverine? The new film from Gina Prince-Bythewood features four very old yet young-looking warriors led by Charlize Theron. All of them have Logan-like super-fast healing powers that we could all use about now.
Netflix definitely intends for The Old Guard to be a hit ,given its star-studded cast featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kiki Layne.
Is there room for a spinoff?
Does a Wolverine kill dudes in the woods?
I May Destroy You, the new series created by and starring Michaela Coel, probably will destroy you. It's about consent, double standards, and justice—and that's just the start.
Also: Tim misremembered the college that helped pioneer the "yes means yes" standard of consent. It was Antioch.
Today’s episode revisits the 1989 classic that put Spike Lee on the map, Do the Right Thing. Over 30 years later, the film’s raw depiction of racial relations in Bedstuy remains controversial - every group feels aggrieved, lashing out with both words and actions. By the time the film is over, one could make a strong case that no one did the right thing. The bubbling tension under the surface during the hottest day of the summer explodes into a riot that feels unavoidable once 911 is dialed.
Lee refused the urge to give the audience simple good versus bad character depictions. Singular characters act on their righteous impulses but are often guided by misplaced, unspoken misunderstandings. By the time Mookie throws the trash can through Sal’s pizzeria, his actions are about more than simply the death of Radio Rahim. The audience is given several reasons Mookie could be at the end of his rope with Sal and his family from Pino’s liberal use of the n-word to Sal’s supposed flirtation with his sister - Mookie’s frustration is macro and micro, legitimate and illegitimate.
Although Do the Right Thing takes place almost entirely on one neighborhood block in 1989, it represented situations happening nationwide. Gentrifying neighbors and passersbys still have the same tense interactions with the black and brown youth today.. No wonder the film continues to resonate in the summer of 2020 as Black Lives Matter protests continue.
Do the Right Thing is available for rent today on several streaming platforms.
Episode Breakdown
0:48 - Where did ‘Sweet Dick Willy’ get his name from?
1:50 - Themes echoing in the modern day
5:05 - Is Mookie a passive character?
11:36 - Does anyone do the right thing?
16:50 - Radio Rahim’s intimidating presence and killing
21:00 - Real life police brutality comparisons
23:15 - The shock of police brutality, camera phones, and Black Lives Matter
31:40 - Mookie’s future and parenting in the film
35:50 - Closing thoughts
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A simple question: Would you go to a movie theater now? Your hosts weigh in from three distinct states with three distinct COVID-19 situations: Texas (Keith), Tennessee (Aaron) and Massachusetts (Tim).
We also get into whether our minds would change if Tenet were playing.
And there are questions about COVID-19 etiquette, whether the theatrical experience can ever be reproduced at home, and why contact tracing is difficult for strip club patrons.
Today’s episode covers Spike Lee’s new film Da 5 Bloods which follows four black GIs returning to Vietnam nearly five decades after their tours ended to recover gold and the remains of their former captain. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned and chaos ensues.
The film releases with impeccable timing as the nation continues to grapple with social unrest in present day. The war scenes take place during 1968’s “Summer of Love” when all Hell broke loose for Black Americans after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Lee uses that eerie parallel to show that things have not changed as much as would like to believe.
Da 5 Bloods is available now on Netflix.
Episode breakdown, with timestamps:
0:42 - Initial thoughts
4:46 - Themes and the leading character, Paul as played by Delroy Lindo
10:10 - Vietnam War footage and previous Hollywood war films
16:22 - What is the purpose of the gold?
19:30 - The ‘mythic’ Stormin’ Norman, ‘Black rage’ in 2020, and Black Lives Matter
25:00 - Dodging the Vietnam War
26:50 - Character arcs for the the Black GIs
36:20 - The choice not to de-age characters during Vietnam War scenes
42:10 - Additional strengths and weaknesses of the film
44:16 - Stormin’ Norman’s fate
51:15 - Give Delroy Lindo all the awards
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Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan as a lawyer who defends a wrongly accused death-row inmate played by Jamie Foxx, is one of many films made available for free in response to the Black Lives Matter protests nationwide. In the latest Low Key podcast, we talk about what the film gets right about racist policing, and what changes we'd like to see in real life.
The discussion of the movie leads to some comparisons of our own interactions with police. Would you believe your two black co-hosts and one white co-host have had very different experiences? Note the extremely long silence when Keith asks Tim at the 34:13 mark in the podcast if a cop has ever walked up to him and asked for ID for no reason.
The nerd nightmare is over: the badgering has paid off, and the Synder Cut of the DC Extended Universe’s Justice League will be released as an HBO Max exclusive sometime in 2021.
In the latest Low Key Podcast, we talk about what it all means, and what we want from the Snyder Cut. And great news: This episode features Sam from the Sam Said It! podcast.
The corporate overlords have bowed to the overbeating might of tweets and petitions to remake the underwhelming November 2017 release into Zack Snyder’s intended glory. The remake will be released as either a four-hour epic film or a six-episode miniseries with enhanced CGI, new character designs, and additional scenes to flesh out the story. This is the sort of thing that would normally only happen in a comic book and yet here we are.
So how did this happen? A group of executives from HBO, Warner Brothers, and DC decided to move forward with the project after viewing an unfinished version of the Synder Cut back in early February 2020.
This cut was based on post production work by Snyder that was unfinished when the director had to step away because of a family tragedy. The film was later completed by Joss Whedon and, understandably, had some mixed issues with tone and plot that audiences didn’t enjoy.
Despite grossing $658 million worldwide, it is considered a missed opportunity by avid comic book fans, casual viewers and business people alike. The Synder Cut could alleviate some of the issues around Justice League and become a huge part of HBO Max’s arsenal as the streaming wars continue to heat up.
This episode of the Low Key pod features special guest Mr. Sam P of the Sam Said It podcast (please check him out!) and follow us on Instagram.
1:00: Sam Returns!
1:42: Wearing a mask during COVID-19 pandemic in Texas and Tennessee
5:00: Timeline of Justice League and the Synder Cut
8:30: Why did audiences not gravitate to the Justice League theatrical release?
11:15: Limitations of the current DCEU compared to the CW Arrowverse
15:22: The problem with creating the Snyder Cut and the R-rated Batman v. Superman.
18:10: Why is the Snyder Cut happening?
21:50: Superman’s insane power level in Justice League
24:00: How the DCEU attempted to mimic MCU’s apocalyptic prophecy and hero relationships.
30:20: DCEU standalone films work better than the team movie.
33:36: “Marvel doesn’t make superhero movies”
38:18: DCEU and latest Star Wars trilogy had no plan
41:20: Should fan criticism lead to massive changes for a franchise’s direction? (listen to this episode of the Movie Maker podcast to hear from the director about changes to Sonic the Hedgehog based on fan feedback)
44:36: Examples of screenings leading to a different final cut.
46:45: Changes to other mediums after a final release (video games, music, etc.)
48:06: Is a four-hour Synder cut too long?
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Netflix does not shy away from distributing stories that give voices to the voiceless - the recently released documentary Murder to Mercy is no exception. The doc shares the story of Cyntoia Brown, a woman who was sentenced to prison for life at the age of 16 for killing a man when she was being sex trafficked at the Nashville, Tennessee area in 2004. Brown told police that she feared for her life and shot the man with a gun inside the house when she believed he was going to violently attack. Fifteen years later, she was granted clemency by the state governor and now works as works as an advocate for helping vulnerable young people who are survivors of sex trafficking.
The film contains footage from initial arrest up until her release from prison which demonstrates a positive example of what’s possible when rehabilitation resources are available. On the other side of the coin, interviews with the women in her biological family are present, each of whom are survivors of sexual abuse by men in their lives whom they trusted. The generational trauma experienced by each of these women is given room to be explored and considered without a political bend which undoubtedly will bother some critics and viewers.
A takeaway that hopefully hits home is that more can be done to help create more accountability from how the justice system responds to the issues of domestic abuse and sex trafficking. The lawyers who fought to secure Brown’s clemency mentioned that the case was having an impact on both a domestic and global scale. Stories like these are difficult to watch but they are worth our engagement given their common occurrence. Give the Low Key podcast a listen for our full thoughts.
Murder and Mercy is available on Netflix now.
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The new documentary Feels Good Man explores how racists, trolls and incels turned an innocuous cartoon character named Pepe the Frog into a symbol of hate. On the latest Low Key podcast, we talk about how the situation epitomizes many of the problems of the internet, where misinformation and propaganda choke out facts and helpful information.
Feels Good Man, directed by Arthur Jones, goes deep into the backstory of Pepe. Once he was a simple creature drawn by artist Matt Furie, known by the dorky catchphrase "Feels good man," which Pepe used to explain why he pees with his pants down.
The document shows how this innocuous creature was soon embraced by a depressing online community of do-littles who identify as "NEET" — an abbreviation for "not in education, employment, or training."
When "normies" — including women — invaded their world by starting to embrace Pepe, the social outcasts rebelled, trying to make Pepe as repugnant as possible by affiliating him with Nazism, misogyny, and other repellant ideologies.
To Furie's dismay, Pepe and hate soon became inseparable.
Netflix's trippy The Midnight Gospel, from comedian Duncan Trussell and animator Pendleton Ward, might be a model for pandemic era TV shows: It asks the big questions in life without requiring any actors to get too close to each other.
The series is about a scamp named Clancy Gilroy (voiced by Trussell), who uses a butt-shaped simulator to travel to different worlds and interview people for his "spacecast," which is basically a podcast, about questions like what happens when we die, why death is so essential to life, and what it means to be enlightened. You can appreciate it for the deep, philosophical conversations Trussell has with the other beings he encounters (voiced by guests as varied as Dr. Drew Pinsky, Damien Echols, Anne Lamott and Ram Dass), or you can enjoy the insane animated shenanigans, such as the zombie war in the first episode. Or you can enjoy both. The show mixes high and low.
Its formula — interesting conversations brought to vivid life through animation — seems like a very intriguing answer to the question of how to make a TV show at a time when so many of us are in quarantine. Innovative moviemakers could easily script and voice their stories separately, and then unite them through animation.
Does The Midnight Gospel work? We discuss. But there's no question it's thought provoking — The Midnight Gospel inspired us to think about real v. simulated reality, and our tendency toward self-destructiveness. By the end of the episode we've covered everything from Animal Crossing to the Michael Jordan doc The Last Dance to, of course, COVID-19. Stick your head in the simulator and join us.
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Netflix's The Platform has drawn plaudits as the perfect film for the age of hoarding. But is it, really? In one of our most divided episodes, we go deep — Level 333 deep — on whether the main metaphor in the film makes any sense at all.
"The Platform," directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, takes place in a multi-level prison where the inmates are fed via a platform that is initially filled with sumptuous dishes — which the inmates pick clean as the platform descends. Those in the lower cells get less and less, until they get nothing at all. Adding to the fun is the fact that the inmates are switched around, apparently at random, so that they are sometimes on good, high-level floors, and sometimes in the deeper ones, where starvation is a very likely fate.
Tim had big problems with this one; Aaron and Keith saw some merits. Overall, we got very philosophical in trying to decide how, if at all, The Platform relates to the way we live now.
Memphis is well known mostly for its music and food, rarely getting a chance to branch out beyond that common framing. Netflix’s ‘Uncorked’ is going for something a little different as it follows the story of a young 20-something guy hoping to accomplish his dream of attaining the title of Master Sommelier. His father wants him to stay over the family business, a BBQ joint first started by his grandfather who bootstrapped his way to entrepreneurial success. Go for your dreams or take over the family business with regrets - it’s an age old tale with a Memphis twist. And because two of Low Key’s host are from the Bluff City, a review was bound to happen no matter what.
Among the actoral talent are anchors of black cinema such as Courtney B. Vance and Niecy Nash provide FOILs for each other - accepting a child’s dream (however fickle it may be) versus taking the mantle (and responsibility) chosen for them. Relative newcomers Mamoudou Athie and Sasha Compère have an undeniable chemistry that ebbs positively and negatively in a way that feels genuine on the screen. From the music to the choreography, there’s a lot to like about this music. It’s not perfect as we discuss over an hour but it is worth your time.
And don’t forget to follow us on @thelowkeypod!
Episode Breakdown
2:39 - Overall impressions
9:20 - Does Elijah appreciate his family’s sacrifice?
11:50 - Elijah’s vibe and Mamoudou Athie;s performance
13:00 - A discussion on “nice guys” and “cool guys”
22:40 - How the films handles racial dynamics
26:38 - Memphis representation (city sights, music, and culture)
38:00 - What is the purpose of Elijah’s sister?
41:15 - Covid-19 implications
46:40 - Netflix’s continued commitment to diverse stories
50:23 - ‘Tiger King’ appreciation
53:30 - Covid-19 impact on Hollywood and celebrities
57:30 - Keith’s birthday and St.Jude donation drive
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DC Universe’s Harley Quinn doesn’t give a f**k about offending people as the first scene demonstrates by showing a yacht full of billionaires robbed and ripped apart. The show is meant to shock audiences. But it also serves as a great example of how R-rated comic book material can allow for an intelligent subversion of tropes and dark humor that reveals why we connect to these broken characters.
Harley herself shines in every episode in both success and failure as she strives to go from the Joker’s lackey to the first modern female supervillian. It sounds simple enough but the show reveals an actual truth of comics - female supervillians are non-existent with our only example suffering a face worse than Arkham. A crew for Harley is assembled to help her become noticed by the Legion of Doom, leading to hijnx that are often hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t already seen the show although we try on this episode.
The mature content in animated DC films seems like an intentional way to set themselves apart from Marvel’s relatively kid-friendly animation. Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, scheduled for release on May 5, 2020, has a R-rated trailer that imagines a worse case scenario for Earth where heroes lose and die to Darkseid’s army. Marvel wins in Hollywood but struggles to reach the high bar set by DC’s animated films and shows. Harley Quinn is another example of DC getting it right. Come find out why for the next 47 minutes and don’t forget to follow us on @thelowkeypod.
Episode Breakdown
1:33 - Overall impressions
6:30 - Best moments in the show
13:12 - Talking the show creators
16:16 - Subverting classic characterizations of heroes and villians
19:44 - Worst comic book movies of all-time
24:13 - Is the show entirely in Harley’s head?
27:50 - A tangent to Scrooged (1988) courtesy of Carol Kane
29:52 - Final thoughts on the show
33:20 - Keith and Aaron convince Tim to watch Netflix’s ‘Love Is Blind’
39:55 - Keith asks about a neighbor problem
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Candyman has aged very well: The 1992 story of a son of a slave who is murdered for loving a white woman — and reborn as a hook-handed slasher — looks at racism with an unflinching honesty missing from a lot of our racial dialogue today. It skillfully, scarily connects the bigotry of old with the bigotry of what was, at the time of its release, the modern age.
Candyman returns in June with a Jordan Peele-produced reboot, and we here at the Low Key Podcast prepared by watching the original. Revisiting Candyman reminds us how much and how little has changed since 1992 — and, in some ways, since 1892.
Zoë Kravitz might be the single best person on earth to star in Hulu's High Fidelity, an update of the John Cusack movie of the same name: Her mom, Lisa Bonet, was one of the stars of that film, based on a Nick Hornby novel, also called High Fidelity.
You've probably gathered that High Fidelity lends itself to adaptation. The novel, released in 1995, was set in London, and featured a record store owner named Rob, reeling from a breakup. The movie, released in 2000, was set in Chicago and featured a record store owner named Rob, reeling from a breakup. And now the show, released this past Valentine's Day, is set in New York and features a record store owner named Rob, reeling from a breakup.
Except now Rob is a biracial woman, and record stores are more nostalgia dens than thriving Gen X businesses. Unlike the previous Robs, she's dated both women and men. But all three Robs love lists, and obsess over their Top 5 worst breakups to figure out what's wrong with the common denominator in all those relationships: Rob.
Tyler Perry’s ‘A Fall From Grace’ is the latest film release and his first foray in the profitable Netflix original - did we enjoy it? You’ll have to listen to find out. But it’s fair to spoil that there’s a lot to like - a likable main character with relatable real-world circumstances, an impactful murder sequence, and the impeccable Phylicia Rashad like you’ve never seen her before.
Throughout this episode we also cover the legacy of Perry and the new Tyler Perry Studios lot in Atlanta that could change opportunities for minorities working to show off projects that are not receiving due attention.
Even if you don’t love the Perry-verse, this is a great episode to understand his legacy in Hollywood and beyond. Please join us again to fill an hour and follow us on @thelowkeypod!
Stephen King disappointed Ava DuVernay earlier this month when he tweeted about casting his Oscar ballot: "I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong."
On the latest Low Key Podcast, your hosts discuss what followed. Should we consider diversity in matters of art? Do we? We also consider Carey Mulligan's modest proposal that perhaps Oscar voters should somehow prove that they've seen all the films before they vote.
It's a far-flung discussion that gets into blind spots, comfort zones, and the general problem of underrepresentation onscreen, years after #OscarsSoWhite.
Parasite, Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-nominated thriller, challenges our sympathies throughout: Do we sympathize with the destitute Kim family? Or the wealthy Parks?
It may seem obvious to you — but it's probably a given that not everyone sees Parasite the way you do. In the latest Low Key podcast, we talk about how our sympathies shifted, or didn't, throughout the masterful film.
Listen above or on your favorite podcasting platform:
Here are some highlights, with time stamps (Spoilers galore!):
2:05: The interesting Native American references in Parasite.
5:05: "They do a good job, once they get the jobs."
6:10: Is Mr. Park a jerk?
7:15: How the Kims screw over other working-class people.
8:00: Are we mad at the Kims for letting insecticide get on the pizza boxes?
8:50: "The poisonous effect does trickle up."
12:00: Ki-woo, the son in the Kim family, is a creep.
17:40: Shout-out to American Psycho.
18:15: Shout-out to Kurt Vonnegut.
23:44: "How thin is the line between the rich and the poor?"
27:05: Let's discuss "the line" and "the smell."
32:00: What if the Kims do have a smell, though?
33:10: The biggest crime the Parks commit.
37:50: The deal with the rock.
42:20: Why did Parasite become so popular in the U.S.?
43:50: "Rich people's worst nightmare"
45:10: Thoughts on the Adam McKay adapatation of Parasite.
46:30: Is Tyler Perry's Fall From Grace the "African-American Parasite"?
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2020 movies have a lot to live up to—2019's movies were some of the best in years. On the latest Low Key podcast, my fellow co-hosts and I nerd out on the 2020 movies we hope will live up to 2019's high standards, from Tenet to Birds of Prey to Chris Rock's take on Saw to, uh, Sonic the Hedgehog.
We like all kinds of movies. But on the Low Key, we especially talk about fan-focused films, with a weakness for comic books and sci-fi. So we're very intrigued by 2020 movies including Black Widow, No Time to Die and A Quiet Place 2.
We take some side trips to talk about Star Wars, Uncut Gems, and Parasite, too. And we talk about Memphis roller coaster the Zippin Pippin, God rest its soul.
By the way: For some of the indie 2020 movies the MovieMaker Magazine team is excited about—from Promising Young Woman to The 40-Year-Old Version to The Climb to Never Rarely Sometimes Always —check out the upcoming issue of MovieMaker magazine.
Here are some highlights of our 2020 movies episode, with timestamps:
1:15: Sonic the Hedgehog!
5:16: A quick aside about Jaleel White.
7:15: Morbius! Birds of Prey!
11:30: Black Widow!
12:00: "Look at us with all this action shit."
17:15: Coming to America!
23:40: A Star Wars aside: "At least let the threat be something different."
29:30: "Everybody knows about the Mid-South Fairgrounds outside of Memphis."
30:00: Love for Dollywood and Dolly Parton
34:20: "2019 was my favorite movie year in like 20 years."
36:30: Go watch the trailer for Christopher Nolan's Tenet.
39:57: No Time to Die and James Bond vs. Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt.
46:00: Breaking news, to Aaron: Chris Rock is joining the Saw franchise.
49:30: A Quiet Place 2!
52:30: A Bloodshot disagreement.
56: "I like the John Wick franchise more than The Matrix franchise."
57:45: "I can't believe we're mentioning Keanu Reeves without mentioning Bill & Ted."
58:30: Top Gun 2!
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Watchmen complicatedly combined falling squid, horrifying racism, a glowing blue man, nuclear panic, fear of sexual humiliation, piles of dead clones, questions about whether we could all be doing more, and an armchair trap door. In the new Low Key podcast, we talk about why it worked for us.
In every episode of Low Key, your co-hosts Aaron Lanton, Keith Dennie, and Tim Molloy talk about pop culture moments we think others may have missed, often through a racial lens.
As Aaron explains near the 20-minute mark of this episode, "Watching this as a black viewer is very different, I think, from watching it as a viewer of some other ethnicity." It isn't just because of the show's heavy references to the Tulsa race riots, or secret racist societies. It's because of the show's difficult questions about how much obligation all Americans have to one another—and how those obligations relate to race.
Watchmen is undeniably, deliberately, messy and confusing. While most screenplays aspire for clarity, Watchmen makes its most searing points by trying to cloud some of our most firmly held perceptions. It asks us to explore our deepest fears, and better understand ourselves in the process.
We hope you like this episode. If you do, please subscribe and rate us.
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Now that we've had some time for the hot takes to cool, we discuss Melina Matsoukas' consciousness-raising road movie Queen and Slim, written by Lena Waithe and starring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie-Turner Smith.
Tim and Keith mostly embrace Queen and Slim, but Aaron says plot issues kept taking him out of the story. He also wonders—and we all discuss—whether the film overgeneralizes in its portrayal of how black people would respond to Queen and Slim's road trip for justice.
Who's right? No one's right, it's all opinion.
The film has gotten mostly positive reviews, but also a few criticisms of particular scenes and characters. In one of our longest episodes, we talk about the film's lush visuals, deliberately complicated story, and most curious moments. We also talk about our own experiences with police stops, and note that police have never asked to search the car of our white host. Hm.
1:15: Praise for Queen and Slim
2:22: Spoilers are coming, look out.
4:23: "This movie was so mixed for me. There were so many things I liked about it and so many things I didn't like about it."
6:55: "This movie is about projection"
9:15: Was Clyde in Bonnie and Clyde gay?
10:30: Aaron explains his first big plot issue with the film.
11:25: Could Queen and Slim have gotten a fair trial?
14:00: "The big issue is...the fact that a black person would be so afraid to even think that they could be represented correctly in a court of law."
24:00: Let's talk about the clothes, and Queen's uncle, played by Bokeem Woodbine.
30:20: That weird gas station scene.
34:20: "Let me tell you something about black people and horses."
36:00: "Road-movie-travel time is not real time."
38:00: The Flea and Chloë Sevigny sequence
40:00: About the mechanic's son
45:40: "Even though I don't agree with shooting police officers—I definitely don't agree with that at all—but I could understand certain people finding that as a way of fighting the power, going against the man, going against oppressors and taking it all the way to this whole other limit."
59:00: Praise for Melina Matsoukas, Lena Waithe, Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie-Turner Smith.
Please follow us on Instagram on @thelowkeypod....
...visit Keith's business, CoffeeandNamaste.com, for all your holiday-season needs...
...and check out this episode of MovieMaker Interviews with Daniel Kaluuya talking about Queen and Slim.
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The Mandalorian signaled how sweepingly it plans to embrace the entire Star Warsuniverse when it stocked its very first references to The Star Wars Holiday Special, a much-despised 1978 TV show that even George Lucas would like to forget.
In our episode, we talk about how charmingly Jon Favreau's The Mandalorian has incorporated not only the things we all agree are cool (Bounty hunters! blasters! Freezing dudes in carbonite!) but also elements of the universe that some fans prefer not to talk about (cute creatures! Midichlorians! The Star Wars Holiday Special!)
Here are some highlights, with timestamps:
1:10: We talk about this storyabout the Star Wars Holiday Special, which is "kind of a janky affair."
2:45: Is Boba Fett overrated?
4:15: How The Mandaloriancalls back the Clint Eastwood-Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns
6:45: Is The Mandalorian's secret headquarters on Tatooine?
16:10: Why you need to use the closed captions while watching The Mandalorian.
22:50: Star Wars' over-explaining problem, aka Jedisplaining.
41:45: Shoutout to Minnow, which is NOT a sponsor.
42:45: What's a better title: The Morning Showor The Mandalorian?
48:50: Netflix is doing a good job on representation, and sometimes showing so-so movies are a positive part of that.
50:50: In defense of Lifetime movies.
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HBO's Watchmen touches on reparations, racist vigilantism, and the destruction, 100 years ago, of the African-American business Mecca known as Black Wall Street. But what is the show actually saying about race? That's one of the main questions we try to unpack in the new Low Key podcast.
Every week on Low Key, your hosts Aaron Lanton, Keith Dennie and Tim Molloy talk about pop culture moments we think others may have missed, often through a racial lens. We like comic books and superheroes. Watchmen seems made for us.
And we do like Watchmen. The acting, cinematography, and music are top-notch. But like most people who watch the show, we have no idea where it's going. Does it have something new or unique to say about how the issues in the show parallel those in the real world? What we're hoping it isn't doing is using race as a plot device. Our continued watching of Watchmen amounts to our giving it the benefit of the doubt that there's an important payoff coming up.
We also talk this episode about lower-stakes mysteries, like what's become of Doctor Manhattan, and where Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons) is being help captive. We aren't 100 percent convinced its on Earth.
If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes. And check out the MovieMaker Interviews podcast for that Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Dolemite Is My Name) interview that comes up at the end of this episode.
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Eddie Murphy's Dolemite Is My Name shows how Rudy Ray Moore became a black independent moviemaker—and became a role model for future DIY artists. In the latest "Low Key" podcast, we talk about how Rudy Ray Moore's Dolemite helped blaze a still-difficult trail for Tyler Perry, Robert Townsend, and other DIY moviemakers who continue to inspire.
On every episode of "Low Key," we discuss subtle aspects of movies, television and other pop culture that we think deserve more attention.
This week, we talk about how Rudy Ray Moore influenced not only hip-hop music, but cinema. Would hip-hop exist without Dolemite? Is Quentin Tarantino a hip-hop moviemaker? These are just a few of the questions we address.
We also talk about the difference between cultural appropriation and polishing and improving other people's routines, and where Rudy Ray Moore belongs in that conversation. And we talk about whether white director Craig Brewer and white writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski do a good job of telling Rudy Ray Moore's story.
If you haven't seen Dolemite Is My Name yet, we recommend checking it out before listening to the podcast. Besides Eddie Murphy, the film also stars Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Titus Burgess, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Wesley Snipes.
Here are some highlights of our talk, with time stamps:
2:15: What we liked about Dolemite Is My Name
3:00: How Rudy Ray Moore helped influence hip-hop
6:35: Why Quentin Tarantino is a very hip-hop moviemaker
6:50:The connection between Dolemite and Grimm fairy tales
9:30: Connecting Dolemite Is My Name and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
12:00: Those amazing martial arts scenes
16:50: How Tyler Perry subverted traditional distribution channels in a way similar to Rudy Ray Moore
25:30: Did the white director and writers do a good job telling this story?
28:30: That great detail about D'Urville Martin and lighting.
37:50: Eddie Murphy's "Dolemite parties"
39:45: How many samurai could one woman kill?
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How well does the CW’s “Batwoman” fit into the network’s other DC shows and the Batman universe? And would we rather see a new standalone heroine with no ties to either?
Every week on “Low Key,” your co-hosts Aaron Lanton, Keith Dennie and I talk about pop culture moments we think others may have missed. This week, we revisit “Batwoman,” which we previously discussed over the summer, based only on the trailer. Now we’ve seen the show and want to give “Batwoman” its due.
First, the things we like: Batwoman does a stellar job of representing people who have traditionally been underseen in comic-book adaptations, and in entertainment overall: Women, people of color, LGBTQ characters. Ruby Rose's Kate Kane, the anchor of the show, is a step forward for lesbian visibility and could be an important role model.
What we're less sure about it how well "Batwoman" distinguishes itself from Batman. We want the storylines to make a harder break from the familiar Gotham tropes, and callbacks to past Batman stories. There are many promising elements of the show, notably Rachel Skarsten's portrayal of Alice, and we're curious to see where "Batwoman" goes.
Here are some of the main subjects of our talk, with time stamps.
2:30: "A lot of things about the show do work for me."
2:53: "I've always been a fan of 'Smallville.'"
4:40: Does the "Batwoman" pilot have too much backstory?
9:50: The Alice stuff is good, and how the second episode improves on the first.
23:10: Would Luke Fox be a good Batman?
24:50: Side note: How we feel about Zoe Kravitz playing Catwoman?
26:30: Some praise for "Zombieland: Double Tap"
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What does "Joker" want to say about poverty, mental illness and other problems society has failed to solve? That's the subject of our latest "Low Key" podcast.
Every week on "Low Key," your hosts Aaron Lanton, Keith Dennie and Tim Molloy look into pop culture subtleties you may have missed. Well, except for this week: This week Tim is replaced (quite successfully) by special guest Sam Perrin of the “Sam Said It” podcast.
Sam, Aaron and Keith go deep on "Joker," questioning how to interpret its ending, whether it wants to make political statements or avoid them, and where it stands on the divide between rich and poor. They focus especially on how the film deals with mental illness, and how to interpret director Todd Phillips' presentation of Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur losing his grip on reality.
Also: Do nice pearls really fall that way?
How to interpret Amazon's acclaimed animated series "Undone"?
The series is about a 28-year-old woman named Alma (Rosa Salazar) who suffers a serious car accident and develops the ability to communicate with her long-dead father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk). She also becomes unstuck in time, and learns to bounce back and forth across decades to try to understand how her father died.
The show leaves many questions open, including whether Anna is really traveling through time, or suffering from a serious mental illness. The show, which reminds us of Richard Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly," occupies an interesting place between real-life and dreams. It makes you appreciate life, reality, and the ability to tell reality from dreams.
Every week on "Low Key" we talk about pop-culture subtleties we think others may have missed, and "Undone" leaves a lot of details open to interpretation. Everyone in the supporting cast feels human and compelling, and almost everyone has ethically troubling secrets. Alma has to not only decipher what's happening in her own mind, but also in everyone else's.
If you like this episode, we'd love for you to subscribe to the podcast and rate us.
Shimmy Shimmy Ya! On the latest episode of the Low Key podcast we talk about “Wu Tang Clan: An American Story,” brought to you by RZA -- the man who brought us “The Man With the Iron Fists.”
(Also: We just found out what RZA stands for “Ruler, Zig-Zag-Zig, Allah.” I don’t know what any of that means, but it sounds dope. Can you say new X- Box Gamertag?)
The series chronicles the formation and the rise of one of hip-hop’s greatest groups, The Wu Tang Clan. So far Hulu has six episodes available for streaming. We're not quite sure what it is just yet, and we discuss how the show works to create the mythos behind the Wu Tang, but seems to lack what we most admire about Wu Tang: the music.
We get a little bit of Bobby (aka RZA) laying down a track with Shotgun (aka Method Man), but we mostly get drug deals and drive-bys. That's fine when accompanied with music, but we want more music. (By the way, we don't endorse drug dealing or drive bys, kids).
During the episode, Aaron brings up the point that movies based on musicians' lives usually have songs that are incorporated into the story. We don’t get much of that here, but to the show's defense, this is a series, not a movie. The series is probably using the early episodes to introduce the characters and their circumstances, and will hopefully use the remaining episodes to show how they use music to overcome these circumstances.
We also never realized that the members of Wu had so many aliases. They seem to have three to five apiece. They're a whole team of superheroes, we're convinced. They are the Avengers… if all the Avenger were rappers, and black men from Staten Island.
Plus, Tim's still trying to figure out if Raekwon really shot up Ghostface Killah’s home back in the day.
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Will Todd Phillips' new "Joker" prove the exception to the rule that villains are best left mysterious? And also, did we ever figure out why Garth Brooks' adopted an emo R&B persona named Chris Gaines? These two equally relevant subjects are the focus of our latest "Low Key" podcast.
This week on "Low Key," we're joined by special guest Sam Perrin of the "Sam Said It" podcast. All of us are comic-book nerds, but despite that, we weren't necessarily desperate for a solo "Joker" film.
As Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader can attest, sometimes it's better not to know a scary villain's entire backstory. But we're cautiously excited for Todd Phillips' highly praised "Joker," which stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Crown Prince of Crime in an homage to Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro classics like "Taxi Driver" and "King of Comedy."
[contextual-link post_id="4362781" title="Also Read" link_title="Let’s Discuss the Tricky Racial Metaphors of ‘Carnival Row’ (Podcast)" target=""]
Our discussion of the Joker leads us to speculate about what other comic-book villains deserve origin stories (looking at you, Doctor Doom), which leads into a discussion of fanfic, which leads into a discussion of "Twilight," which delves smoothly into some praises for Lil Nas X, and the oft-forgotten contribution that Nine Inch Nails made to "Old Town Road."
That in turn leads us into a lengthy discussion of the time Garth Brooks adopted a kind of emo R&B alterego named Chris Gaines, and the beauty of the Chris Gaines' single "Lost in You." It's really pretty. Have you listened to it? You should.
Anyway, given that Joker won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, we're prepared to be pleasantly surprised by Phillips dark vision. Also pleasantly surprising is the way Gaines' voice goes liltingly high at around the 1:40 mark of "Lost in You," before going into a delicate and impeccable guitar solo. Is "Lost in You" our favorite Garth Brooks song? Are we allowed to say that?
Needless to say, this is a wonderful episode, and you should subscribe to both "Low Key" and "Sam Said It."
Here are some of the key issues we talk about this episode, with timestamps:
3:40: Batman questions aside, could the Joker beat Superman?
4:27: "You tell 10-year-old me, hey, you want to hear about Darth Vader? The answer would be, 'Sure, why not? I would love to see how Darth Vader became evil.' And then we got it, and it was like, now I renege on that. I don't want that again."
7:19: "I think Doctor Doom needs a movie."
11:43: Some thoughts on Namor as a potential villain in "Black Panther 2."
15:10: Why you should keep writing all that fanfic.
16:30: The whitest thing that has ever happened on the podcast happens
17:13: Keith informs Aaron of the existence of Chris Gaines and the Chris Gaines phenomenon is discussed at length
21:44: "Jojo Rabbit looks incredible to me"
25:00: A confession about "The Dark Knight," and a lengthy discussion of that complicated scene with the two boats.
33:50: Let's talk about "The Killing Joke"
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Fae! Pucks! Critches! This week on the "Low Key" podcast, we talk about these and other words we think might be racial slurs in the world of "Carnival Row," Amazon's unique take on bigotry and immigration.
The new series examines a star-crossed relationship between a human detective named Philo (Orlando Bloom) and a winged fae named Vignette (Cara Delevigne) that is filled with metaphors we're trying very hard to follow. The show creates a vast and complex fictional world, then populates it with storylines that seem oddly reminiscent of things happening in America today.
Every week on "Low Key," we look for pop culture subtleties, often through a racial lens, so "Carnival Row" was kind of made for us. It's filled with nuance, and rewards viewers for patience and close attention. Our favorite subplot involves the "there goes the neighborhood" arrival or the mysterious puck Mr. Agreus (David Gyasi), who draws the intense interest of privileged neighbor (and master to Vignette) Imogen Spurnrose (Tamzin Merchant).
We're also caught very off-guard by a subplot involving fae fetishist Jonah Breakspear (Arty Froushan), son of the eminent Absalom Breakspear (Jared Harris). Whether you like "Carnival Row" or not -- and we do -- it's a lot of fun to talk about.
Here are some of the main points of our conversation, with timestamps:
5:30: Apologies to Downton Abbey
7:05: Praise for Tamzin Merchant
8:45: “If you were to make like an eight-episode porn scene where sex only happened in the seventh episode? If you have the dedication to watch that kind of pornography, you’ve got it. ‘Carnival Row’ has it.”
16:38: Some thoughts on the precarious Spurnrose situation
17:10: “The only-person-to-survive thing felt unnecessary.”
30:00: A pretty big spoiler
36:51: Someone yells "YEAH!" a little too loud
If you like us, subscribe. If you don't, check out the "Shoot This Now" or "Meanwhile in the Multiverse" podcasts.
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"Don't Let Go" stars David Oyelowo as an LAPD detective who starts getting phone calls from his niece, played by Storm Reid -- after she and her parents are brutally murdered. Is it about time-travel? Parallel dimensions? God? We talk it out on the new "Low Key."
The Blumhouse film, from Jacob Aaron Estes, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival under the original name "Relive." It quickly sets up the plot before taking us through a series of twists that challenge everything you thought you knew about cell phone conversations between the living and the dead.
Is it a time-travel film? A story of crossed realities? We spend this episode puzzling it out, while praising the work of Reid and Oyelowo.
We also talk about how Estes and Oyelowo, a producer on the film, changes the setting from a farm in Ohio to the streets of Los Angeles, an especially intense scene late in the film, and the Zodiac killer.
Here are a few of our topics, with time stamps:
2:30: "I don't know if it's a time-travel movie, I don't know if it's a movie about parallel universes, I don't know if it's a movie where when you die you don't really die you're just transported to another world where you're actually living."
6:05: Has there been another movie quite like "Don't Let Go"?
11:30: Go watch "Jacob's Ladder"
16:30: “Hitman” is hard
17:37: This movie was originally set on a farm in Ohio with a bunch of white people
18:45: Props, Blumhouse
24:05: If someone was pointing a gun at you, would you rather run or ride a bike to escape?
28:35: The man-in-a-horror-movie dilemma
If you like us, please subscribe.
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Usually on the "Low Key" podcast, we talk about pop culture moments we think others may have missed, often through a racial lens. This week, we just talk about some projects we're excited about, from "Cannon Busters" to "The Witcher" to "The Irishman" to "The Mandelorian," "Dolemite is My Name" and "Harriet."
Of all those films and TV shows, only one -- the Netflix anime series "Cannon Busters," has been released. Aaron, a hardcore anime fan, tell us how intrigued he was to see anime with black characters in key roles.
Keith, meanwhile, wonders if "The Witcher," starring Henry Cavill, can overcome the curse of many video-game adaptations.
And Tim is eager to see if "The Irishman" -- from the super team of Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci -- can win its big CGI gamble to become the instant gangster classic we hope it will be.
We also talk about Kasi Lemmons' upcoming Harriet Tubman biopic "Harriet," Eddie Murphy in "Dolemite Is My Name," and Jon Favreau's mysterious "The Mandalorian."
Netflix is very well-represented on the list of projects we're excited about -- "Cannon Busters," "The Witcher," "The Irishman" and "Dolemite" are all Netflix projects. But we also talk about how Netflix may change in response to Disney+, future home of "The Mandalorian" and many more "Star Wars" and Marvel Cinematic Universe stories.
Here are some highlights of the episode and timestamps:
00:40: A quick recap of the great Tennessee Wing-Off (Congratulations, Sarah!)
2:15: The majesty of "Cannon Busters"
4:56: Why we think "The Witcher" looks good, and the risks of video game adaptations. We also try to name as many video game adaptations as we can, off the top of our heads.
7:59: How bad movies get made (featuring some advice by William Goldman)
10:44: Let's nerd out about "The Irishman" and digital de-aging
14:40: Speaking of de-aging... "Gemini Man"!
18:40: What would it take go get Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to play Goro?
22:00: Why it's hard to be the movie trailer before the one for "Harriet"
25:10: "Who's asking for this?"
37:30: Dolemite!
40:16: Don't forget to please subscribe and review us on Apple, please.
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Do you need to know the history of the Manson Family and Sharon Tate to appreciate "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"? That's one of our first questions in our wrap-up of Quentin Tarantino's latest.
Every week on "Low Key" we talk about pop culture moments we think others may have missed. This week: Prior to "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood," one of your hosts, Tim, knew much too much about the Manson murders. But your other two ghosts, Keith and Aaron, didn't know that Manson's followers killed Sharon Tate and her friends in August of 1969.
That means this episode offers you two radically different perspectives on the film. Does it work if you've read up on the Manson murders? Does it work if you haven't? Did Aaron and Keith watch a totally different movie than Tim did?
We also talk about Tim's exclusive interview this week with Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter, about the screen legend's portrayal in the film. Shannon Lee says she understood the film was meant as a revenge fantasy, but felt, as she watched, as if her father was treated disrespectfully for laughs.
We also talk about whether we should believe anything in the film that happens from the P.O.V. of Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Did he misremember his encounter with Bruce Lee? Did he misremember his encounter with the Mansons?
There's a lot to break down this episode as we try to understand "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood."
Here are some of the points we discuss, and when we discuss them, with time stamps:
2:21: What it's like to watch "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" if you don't know the real-life details of how Sharon Tate and her friends were killed.
3:07: "This is the opposite of a horror movie."
5:25: "I don't think it's one of his best films. I wouldn't watch it again."
7:05: Tim offers three different interpretations of the film.
7:30: Is the whole film an attack on "Social-Media Justice Warriors"? (Thanks for that phrase, Neal Brennan.)
10:15: How essential is LSD to this movie?
14:48: Does Amy Nicholson's new podcast, "Quentin Tarantino's Feature Presentation," contain a huge clue about how to interpret "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"?
16:42: "Keith, let me ask you... how many black people are in this film?"
17:19: "There was a point in time... I forgot that it was a Tarantino movie."
19:25: Let's talk about the whole wife thing.
21:25: Why Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is kind of a "nightmare figure."
21: 30: Tim gets corrected
22:17: We list the Tarantino characters who aren't pretty terrible people
24:50: Let's discuss Tim's exclusive interview earlier this week with Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter
35:20: Did Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) have enough to do onscreen?
36:30: Tim recommends this story by Trey Williams on why the book Sharon Tate buys for Roman Polanski, "Tess d'Urbervilles," is significant
42:30: Does "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" have "a replay quality"?
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"Game of Thrones" decapitated fairy tale and fantasy tropes by giving us deeply flawed knights, kings and queens. Amazon's new "The Boys" similarly demystifies superheroes, as we discuss on the latest "Low Key" podcast.
Every week on "Low Key," Aaron Lanton, Keith Dennie and Tim Molloy look at pop culture subtleties and what they mean. "The Boys," Eric Kripke's adaptation of Gareth Ennis' comic book about the antiheroes who try to rein in corrupt superheroes, is full of nuance -- as well as very unsubtle sex and violence.
"The Boys" works if you love superhero movies, but might work even better if you're totally sick of them. If you're one of those people who thinks DC and Marvel movies are crowding out movies for grown-ups, you'll probably appreciate the "Boys" POV that superheroes are mass-marketed profit generators, not uber-beings who deserve our adoration.
"The Boys" is pretty gruesome and cynical in places, but that feels like a direct responser to the occasional slickness of past superhero stories. It asks us to imagine what heroes would be like if they didn't turn down salaries and try to deflect attention from themselves, and instead bickered over photo ops and marketing deals. It's easy to imagine "The Boys" as a show about crisis PR.
And it throws in quite a few surprises.
"The Boys" is executive produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who previously executive produced the Ennis adaptation "Preacher."
Here are a few of the things we discuss, with timestamps:
:45: Some interesting feedback on our last episode, on pandering. (Send your feedback to @timamolloy or @alanton11 on Twitter, or @thelowkeypod on Instagram
3:46: Some thoughts on "Preacher."
6:20: Comparing how we think about superheroes, and how we think about cops
9:20: Is Batman a little bit fascist?
15:20: Remember how selfish Spider-Man used to be?
17:30: Praise for Elisabeth Shue, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Jesse Usher, Chace Crawford, Anthony Starr and everyone else in the cast
18:25: How Homelander kind of reminds us of John Paul Gosselaar
18:49: "He just looks like the human personification of white supremacy"
23:30: "It's been a while since I watched a show and I get to the end and I'm about to flip the f---ing table"
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A dubious news report that a black actress, Lashana Lynch, will play 007 in the next James Bond film got your friendly neighborhood "Low Key" hosts wondering: When do Hollywood's attempts at diversity in casting feel positive, and when do they feel like pandering? And is there such a thing as positive pandering?
This week we're joined by special guest host Sarah Lanton as our discussion of the James Bond franchise leads us into a discussion of the American James Bond, Batman. That in turn leads us into a discussion of the CW's new "Batwoman," played by Ruby Rose, and how much one of your hosts, Keith, does not like the trailer. He explains why.
Here are a few of the other subjects we handle:
1:55: Tim expresses his strong reservations about The Daily Mail newspaper, which reported on Lashana Lynch's casting.
3:22: Could Lashana Lynch's casting just be an attempt to placate audiences, when want we really want is Idris Elba as the first black Bond?
6:20: Who was the best Bond?
7:55: Who is the audience for the new Bond movie? And what Marvel and "Into the Spider-Verse" did right in their reimagining of Spider-Man, and avoided bad pandering.
10:01: Does James Bond have to be a man for his character to make sense? And is misogyny built into the character?
15:24: We talk about characters who don't pander at all, but are still fascinating and fun to watch -- from Patrick Bateman ("American Psycho") to Humbert Humbert ("Lolita") to Hannibal Lecter ("Silence of the Lambs") to Norman Bates ("Psycho") to Anthony Jeselnik's onstage persona.
21:59: Sarah says something shocking
22:22: Aaron and Sarah agree that "Black Lightning" is "super-pandering"... in a good way
23:20: Is the new Batwoman more or less deserving of the "Bat" legacy than Miles Morales is of the "Spider" legacy?
32:30: Is pandering always a bad thing?
39:01: Shoutout to pandas!
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For all the nostalgia of "Stranger Things" -- the New Coke, the mall, the music -- the most uncanny memory it conjures is the feeling of first seeing a scary movie you were too young to see.
With the very good Season 3 behind us, we still don't have resolution to some of the key mysteries unveiled in Season 1 and Season 2.
Is the show doing too much? Or does the continuing mystery add to the feeling of being 10 years old, sitting in a cold theater or watching a worn VHS tape, trying to understand the mysteries of "Gremlins" or "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" or countless other mid-80s movies that drew millions of young fans, but also flirted with very confusing horror.
We've never seen another show that reminds us of that childhood sense that we were learning about strange new things that frightened us, and that we might never understand. (And that maybe adults didn't understand, either. That was the most frightening part.) The Duffer Brothers do a very good job of capturing that uniquely unsettling feeling, and how it pierces our uncomplicated nostalgia for Slurpees, video games, and the other fun parts of being a kid.
Here are some of our other discussion points this episode, and where they come up:
1:15: Does "Stranger Things" Season 3 make any sense if you haven't seen Seasons 1 and 2?
9:02: What do the antagonists actually... want?
10:20: What happened to Billy being racist?
11: 30: "This is the only show where I think not understanding it actually helps it."
11:48: One of us calls "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" by the wrong name
15:01: Is the show introducing too many characters without fully exploring the existing ones?
20:10: Does "Stranger Things" actually care about the death of America's small towns?
30:45: What's going on with Will (or not going on with Will), and why we relate to him
38:30: Does it seem like people are more angry at Hopper than Billy?
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This week we talk about Netflix's Spike Lee-produced "See You Yesterday," which combines the time-travel goofiness of "Back to the Future" with the social criticism of "Boys N the Hood" (RIP, John Singleton).
Does it work? We're a little divided. We appreciate that the protagonist is a young, black and female scientist (Eden-Duncan Smith). We love seeing Marty McFly himself, Michael J. Fox, reading Octavia E. Butler's time-travel classic "Kindred."
But the question is how well the film melds silliness with seriousness. We have a good honest discussion, and ultimately we're glad this story exists in the world. We hope you enjoy it.
ALSO: Follow @thelowkeypod on Instagram! We see you, Cousin Sara.
This episode, we welcome our first guests: "Black Mirror" executive producers Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones drop in for a (very) quick interview to discuss "Striking Viper," our favorite episode of Season 5.
We talk about how "Tekken" used to make Brooker's home sound like an S&M dungeon, men's struggles to express our emotions, and why polar- bear sex doesn't sound so great. We also talk about the essential "Black Mirror" episodes.
If you have any thoughts, hit up @alanton11 or @timamolloy. Keith is still too cool for Twitter.
The "Game of Thrones" finale left the "Low Key" team divided. House Aaron was disappointed. House Keith found it lackluster. House Tim was satisfied.
We get into detail about the reasons why, while pondering several other issues, before getting into the real question: Was Bran the bad guy all along?
We also discuss the final Jon-Dany scene, why the main cast members are kinda jerks, and the one thing we all agree on: That beautiful shot of dragon wings behind Queen Daenerys.
And then we get to an issue we think everyone's been missing: Couldn't Bran have prevented a lot of pain and atrocity (including for his sister, Sansa) by using his time-travel or warg powers? Was it maybe a little self-serving to allow lots of awful things to happen so that he could become king of the, uh, six kingdoms?
Join us as we say goodbye to a show that we all agree was totally brilliant for at least four seasons. (And that the person writing this loved from beginning to end.)
If you haven't watched the penultimate episode of "Game of Thrones," you should skip this episode, and also tweet at @timamolloy or @alanton11 for our HBO Go passwords. Because you're going to want to be caught up for the finale this Sunday.
On this episode, we gave a dragon-fiery debate whether the show properly set up Daenerys Targaryen's heel turn, examine whether Targaryens have dragon blood, talk WAY too much about Targaryen inbreeding, and predict in extensive detail how we think "Game of Thrones" will end.
We also play Daenerys Advocate to point out that what she did to King's Landing isn't that different than, oh, say, what the United States did to Japan at the end of World War II. War is hell, and history is a series of overreactions.
"Avengers: Endgame" sets a new standard for franchise films and universe-building. But is that a good thing?
On the latest "Low Key," we talk about why the massive success of "Endgame" -- not just in terms of box office, but also in terms of fan service -- is likely to inspire lots of imitators. We talk about what lesson other universes -- "Star Wars" and DC come to mind -- can learn from the MCU.
But we also wonder if big, IP-driven films will drive out smaller, more personal films -- we hope not.
And we nerd out on a few big questions, like whether Thor is to blame for a very sad thing that happened in "Avengers: Endgame." Many, many spoilers are contained within, but you don't care since you've already seen "Endgame" two or three times.
What happens in "Avengers: Endgame"? We have no idea. But in this episode, we talk about our hopes, predictions and fears for the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe stories we've followed for more than a decade.
To be 100 percent clear: We have not, as of this writing, seen "Endgame," or heard any spoilers. We've carefully avoided leaked scenes, and covered our ears whenever friends tried to drop hints.
So this episode of "Low Key" is based only on our opinions -- and our fandom of the 21 films in the MCU so far. We don't claim to know everything -- anyone else have trouble keeping track of all the Infinity Stones? -- but we do love the movies and the comics that inspired them.
We also talk this episode about what DC could learn from Marvel's films.
Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) lures us to the beautiful, fictional "Guava Island" for his new Amazon film of the same name, and we're delighted to be there.
On this week's episode of the Low Key Podcast, we talk about the politics of Guava Island -- the place and the film -- as well as our thoughts about Glover's work overall, especially FX's "Atlanta." We also talk about how we wish Glover's "Guava Island" co-star, Rihanna, had a little more to do, and why Red (Nonso Anozie) is such a good villain.
"Guava Island" is the story of a singer who dreams of putting on a festival to bring joy to the people he loves. It reminds us a little of Bob Marley's 1976 "Smile Jamaica" concert -- which almost got Bob Marley killed. Two days before the performance, would-be killers shot Bob Marley in the chest and his wife Rita Marley in the head. They also shot his manager, Don Taylor, and band employee Louis Griffiths. Miraculously, everyone survived, and Marley put on a legendary concert that began with the song "War."
The story of Bob Marley surviving the assassination attempt is the subject of Marlon James' novel "A Brief History of Seven Killings," winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It has inspired a TV series which will soon appear on Amazon -- the same place that brought us Guava Island.
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This episode of "Low Key" is about the dark side of comedy. We all know laughter eases pain, but we don't talk so much about the acute pain of failing to make people laugh.
The first episode of Jordan Peele's revived "The Twilight Zone," starring Kumail Nanjiani as a standup comic who will do anything to succeed, perfectly captures the agony of speaking into a mic to a crowd of people who refuse to laugh.
And the new teaser for Todd Phillips' "The Joker" drives home how depressing it is to try to be funny. It stars Joaquin Phoenix as a clown by day and comedian by night who isn't doing well in either job.
We also talk about whether "The Twilight Zone" lost something when CBS All Access doubled its half-hour, 1950s running time to an hour for Peele's revival. And whether the Joker loses some of his menacing mystery when we learn his his life story.
Also: Aaron wonders why white people keep approaching dangerous animals at the zoo.
"Get Out" was a horror classic, so Jordan Peele's "Us," his follow-up, had big, scary shoes to fill. In the latest "Low Key" podcast, we talk about whether the latest addition to the Peeleverse lives up to our very high expectations.
"Us" is a movie made for people who fixate on small details, like why Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) is offbeat when she snaps her fingers, and why her son Jason's lighter doesn't seem to have any fuel in it. It's a smorgasbord of low-key delights. But the subtleties add up powerfully: The more you think about "Us," the better it is.
"Us" works as a family slasher movie (and is probably the only film of the family slasher genre?), but also offers deeper meaning for anyone who cares to look. Peele also uses creepy, subtle symbols like rabbits, scissors and a Michael Jackson T-shirt to make a statement about social hierarchy.
It isn't hard to tunnel down a rabbit hole as you try to make sense of the world that "Us" inhabits... and wonder if it's our world, too.
If you like this episode, please subscribe on Apple and leave us a review. The reviews are also the best place to let us know if you agree with our theory about James, his lighter, and exactly what's going on with the Wilson family.
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Efforts by a few fragile fanboys to sabotage "Captain Marvel" completely failed -- but they did succeed in sparking a few fights that aren't worth having.
Before "Captain Marvel" even opened, trolls targeted it on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and YouTube, spurring all three to make changes designed to screen out attacks from people who hadn't actually seen the film.
"Captain Marvel" beat the trolls handily, opening to $153 million domestically and $455 million worldwide. It is certain to be one of the fastest films to gross $1 billion at the box office.
Why were some men so threatened by a superhero movie?
Trolls cause lots of problems. But one of the less-obvious ones is the way they drive people to take extreme positions that divide us all.
In the case of "Captain Marvel," they treated a female-fronted superhero movie as an existential threat to men. That led other fans to celebrate "Captain Marvel" more vigorously than they otherwise might have. And that, in turn, made the film a more attractive target.
Was it really a game-changer? Was it a perfect embodiment of feminism? Was it flawless in every regard?
Were we really going to have this argument?
If you're interested in this topic, we strongly recommend Cara Buckley's story about it in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/movies/captain-marvel-brie-larson-rotten-tomatoes.html
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Had a rough week? The cheerfully silly, R-rated weirdness of "Doom Patrol" might be just what you need. The DC Universe show is a little bit "X-Men," a little bit 1950s monster movie, and a lot of lesson-free fun.
"Doom Patrol" follows Brendan Fraser as a lumbering robot man named, uh, "Robot Man," who joins a grimly goofy team of super zeroes who live together in Doom Manor under the guardianship of their "Chief," played by Timothy Dalton. The cast includes Diane Guerrero as Crazy Jane, April Bowlby as Elasti-Girl, Matt Bomer as Negative Man, Joivan Wade as Cyborg, and Alan Tudyk as their arch-nemesis, Mr. Nobody.
"Doom Patrol" has drawn many "X-Men" comparisons because Chief, like Professor X, uses a wheelchair, lives in a secluded mountain and leads a team of outcasts. But the first "Doom Patrol" comic actually beat the first issue of "X-Men" by three months, back in 1963.
So turn off your brain and enjoy "Doom Patrol." You'll just laugh, wince, and watch a puff of green smoke emerge from a donkey's butt, one of several butts you'll see in the first couple episodes.
Stephen Soderbergh's "High Flying Bird" imagines black pro athletes bypassing mostly white team owners to finally reap the profits of their own athleticism. Is it just a dream, or could Colin Kaepernick's fight with the NFL be the start of something like the nascent revolt in the film?
The film imagines what would happen if the mostly black athletes in the NBA discovered a way to profit from their own hard work without white team owners taking a massive cut of the profits. Super agent Andre Holland plays Ray Burke, who uses social media to circumvent the league and TV networks, and gives his rookie client Erick (Melvin Gregg) a potential map toward a future in which athletes, not owners, control their destinies.
Our talk soon turns to Colin Kaepernick's fight with another league, the NFL, and whether it... made any sense. Finally, we discuss "The Revolt of the Black Athlete," the book Zazie Beetz's character starts reading at the end of "High Flying Bird."
We also talk about Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson, J. Cole, and finally, what's really going on with the Lakers.
Liam Neeson admits that for a time, he walked the streets looking for an excuse to kill a random black man because of his anger over a friend's rape. On this episode, we talk about the deep history of insidious and deadly lies that fed his mindset, and what we can all learn from his admission.
We go from Neeson to Trayvon Martin to Jussie Smollet to why growing up on an island that's 96 percent white might make you susceptible to some backward views on race. And we also talk about some of the ways the media coverage of Neeson's admission could have been better.
Just when we're about to sign off, we instead go into a deep dive about the long, long history of white people using accusations of aggression by one black man to justify horrific behavior against large numbers of African-Americans. If this subject interests you, we'd recommend reading up on Rosewood, Florida and the Scotsboro case, to start.
We love "Black Panther," but we're kind of stunned it has an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
We want to believe Ryan Coogler's film was nominated just by being great, but as Keith puts it: "Don't give us handouts, Oscars."
Are Oscar voters making up for past snubs of superhero films, like "Dark Knight"? Or past snubs of African-American films? Could it be that Oscar voters simply love "Black Panther" as much as we do?
With nearly a year of hindsight, we also talk the true meaning of "Black Panther." The key figure may not be Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), but rather his antagonist, Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Does Killmonger symbolize radical revolutionaries, as it might appear at first glance? Or is "Black Panther" really a film about survivor's remorse?
If you like this, please share it with someone else who loves Black Panther. And review us on iTunes to tell us what you think about the Oscar nomination.
Barry Jenkins' "If Beale Street Could Talk," based on the book by James Baldwin, uses an almost deliriously beautiful love story to show how the criminal justice system unjustly targets black men. This week, Aaron Lanton and Keith Dennie talk about how much the film hit home (and not just because they both grew up in Memphis, the home of Beale Street.)
One scene in particular -- when our hero, Fonny (Stephan James), realizes how easily he could be framed for a crime he didn't commit -- reminded Keith of a horror movie. He says a speech from Bryan Tyree Henry's character, who has just returned from prison, recalled moments in a horror story when someone tells a ghost story that foreshadows something terrible will happen to the lead character.
Aaron adds: "You realize... I keep having this conversation, too."
You should probably see the movie before listening to this episode.
Was "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" more like a fun "Goosebumps" book? Or a way for a massive corporation to gain insights into your private viewing habits?
This episode, we wonder if "Bandersnatch" will open the door to a future in which entertainment companies will be able to tell not just whether we prefer Frosties or Sugar Puffs, but also our attention spans and tolerance for violence. Just imagine how "choose your own adventure" technology will evolve in an age of sex robots and "Blade Runner 2049"-style hologram boyfriends and girlfriends. Everyone's weirdest secrets will be carefully tracked.
Also, here's a great story about how anyone can track your movements for $300: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile
"Into the Spider-Verse" is a masterpiece, but it's especially special for black and Latino audiences who've been underrepresented in super hero movies. This episode, we talk about why certain lines and moments in the film may resonate more with Spider-fans of color.
As Ava DuVernay tweeted over the weekend, "You’re the best of us, Miles. You’re on your way. Just keep going.”
If you like us, throw us some stars on iTunes, okay? And happy holidays. We love you.
The critically acclaimed Netflix hit "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" has been a hit in more ways than one - the streaming giant recently settled in a lawsuit brought by the The Satanic Temple for $150 million for an alleged depiction of the Baphomet statue. We were shocked that the lawsuit held so much merit which caused us to think about the use of Satanic imagery allusions in other American pop culture and its depiction of women as the great threat to male purity.
It sounds haughty but it's a hilarious conversation. Come join us!
We were pretty skeptical of DC's "Titans" at first. That promo where Robin says "f--- Batman" didn't exactly win us over. But now that the show is live on DCUniverse.com, we think it's actually worth watching, even for a few bucks a month.
"Titans" had a lot to overcome in our minds: a lot of superhero shows feel cheap, and we're kind of tired of the de facto gritty feel of so many comic book projects. But this one somehow works, and on this episode of "Low Key," we talk about why.
Happy Thanksgiving!
This week on "Low Key," Aaron, Keith and Tim discuss "The Conners," the Roseanne-free version of "Roseanne." We talk about how bad Roseanne Barr's "Planet of the Apes" tweet was and whether it should have gotten her kicked off her show. And how realistically "The Conners" handle problems like the opioid crisis. And who is the better "The Conners" character: DJ, or the couch.
Also: Why there can never, ever be a "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie without the great Jaleel White.
If you like it, put five stars on it.
The day before Megan Kelly's defense of blackface at Halloween, we this episode about some rules for white people at Halloween. Little did we suspect he would have to again remind people: NO BLACKFACE.
On this episode of "Low Key," we discuss the racial rules of Halloween, and why a black child playing Spider-Man for Halloween doesn't include as many potential pitfalls as a white kid playing Black Panther.
Rule No. 1: No blackface. Rule No. 2: Don't do voices.
For the other rules, listen to the episode.
We also talk about which superheroes' whiteness or blackness is essential to who they are. Is Batman's super power white privilege? Maybe. But there's no arguing that T'Challa's African heritage is essential to his strength.
New CBS sitcom "The Neighborhood" about a white family moving into a black neighborhood - a bold choice that has mixed results. Critics and audiences have panned the show after just two episodes have aired, but is it worth giving a shot for the long haul?
Keith, Tim, and Aaron give a review of the first two episodes (what worked, what didn't, where it is likely to go), and learn a lot about each other's cultural differences (did you guys know white people don't use wash cloths in the shower?!?!)
How did the Xbox get the black vote?
Why does YouTube's ("unbias") algorithm recommend recommendations for alt-right conspiracies if you look up negative criticism of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi?"
Does the increase in divorce rate mean we are becoming less moral?
Keith, Tim, and Aaron cover this and much more in the most fun episode yet.
Oh, and that Supreme Court stuff is mentioned for about 20 seconds.
Louis C.K. is attempting a comeback on his own timeline after admitted masturbatory misdeeds.
Asia Argento is denying sexual assault allegations from a male (at the time) minor.
Like many high profile accused folk, neither of them is likely to face criminal charges. Tim, Keith and Aaron are crazy enough to wonder aloud:
- Why sexual crimes have so few consequences even when they are proven to have happened?
- Would people treat the Asia Argento situation more seriously if the genders were reversed?
- Who should serve as head of our made-up Comedy HR? (spoiler we nominated Sarah Silverman and Anthony Jeselnik)
It's the craziest episode yet and we're happy to bring it you!
The Queen of Soul passed away last week, causing us to question why we, the adoring public, are impacted by celebrity deaths as if a close friend or family member has left our lives.
Keith, Tim, and Aaron share the celebrities who have impacted them the most, and why single women can nab
Keith by gifting him, "The Art of the Deal."
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Projects with no black people are accused of racism.
Projects with too many black people are labeled "a black show."
Casting directors and writers decide who stays in front of the camera. Diversity is a hard, thankless job part of the job to navigate. Keith, Tim, and Aaron discuss why it's so controversial and great recent examples of black representation for TV and cinema.
Former Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader are the latest people to have old tweets come back to haunt them. The repercussions were vastly different for both guys but it raises an important question: what should the consequences be for offensive tweets, and how old should the tweet (or the individual) be for us to let it go?
Tim Molloy, Keith Dennie, and Aaron Lanton discuss if things are going too far and how societal evolution changes our collective judgement! Plus, Tim and Aaron read off their first ten tweets! Regrettably, Keith won't face this embarrassment because he never had a Twitter account.
Show notes
Disney Drops James Gunn From ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Franchise After Offensive Tweets
Josh Hader Has An Awful, Racist, Homophobic Twitter History
Scarlett Johansson's latest role as a trans man in the upcoming Pittsburgh mafia film "Rub and Tug" is causing controversy. Critics have called the casting an example of "cis-washing" and berated ScarJo's tepid response to the their frustration.
Tim, Keith, and Aaron talk about why it's a big deal and the progress made (or lack thereof) for non-straight actors in Hollywood.
Show Notes
Scarlett Johansson Responds To Backlash For Being Cast As Trans Man In ‘Rub & Tug’
Drake thought Pusha T would be another easy notch on his belt, but it when far worse than anyone could have ever expected. What does it mean when the top rapper in the game pleads out of a beef with a written memo and an appeal for peace by one of his managers? Considering rap's status as a pop genre, maybe nothing.
Keith, Tim, and Aaron explain in this episode about what this means for hip hop and end by discussing the legendary Youtube video that captured the night James Brown, Prince, and Michael Jackson were on stage at the same damn time in 1983.
The crew reviews "Ye" (except one of the guys who has a Kanye ban in the house), discuss the supposed Trump bump, and question is Kanye has found himself in a Citizen Kane situation.
It's not as silly as normal but there's a lot to learn from the ascension of Kanye into madness.
Related Articles for Perusal:
How One 19-Year-Old Illinois Man Is Distorting National Polling Averages:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old-illinois-man-is-distorting-national-polling-averages.html
Trump’s Support Among Black Men Doubles After Kanye West Endorsement, Reuters Poll Says:
https://www.thewrap.com/black-male-support-trump-doubles-kanye-west/
The crew meant to do an entire episode about Donald Glover's insanely popular "This Is America" video, but CW's "Black Lightning" came up and... well, you'll see.
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Tim, Keith, and Aaron discuss the Jay-Z interview on David Letterman's Netflix show "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction." Plus, the guys give their theories for the next Avengers film (premiering next week!), and Keith explains how to save your marriage by hiring a ninja.
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Tim, Keith, and Aaron return to give a review of Atlanta's surprising episode "Teddy Perkins." Along the way they discuss blackface, whiteface, Killer Mike's self-own, and how Atlanta's greatest strength (absurdity) is leading to missed storytelling opportunities.
Relevant Links:
‘Atlanta': 9 Teddy Perkins-Michael Jackson Parallels That Aren’t So Obvious
Jimmy Kimmel's Blackface Impression of Karl Malone
Welcome the first episode of Low Key! Our first journey with the crew explores the key themes of Marvel's Black Panther that went unnoticed. For example, is there a such thing as a good ethnostate? How does vibranium work as an allegory to Silicon Valley's pillage of African cobalt? Why do many people believe Eric Killmonger is more empathetic than T'Challa?
We dive into that and more in this premiere episode!