Drat Pack

Must Romeo die? Must he??? Well, ironically, no, according to 2000’s Romeo Must Die, which neatly sidesteps the whole tragedy issue by pointing fingers at actual villains, and then using an x-ray effect to see Jet Li breaking those fingers. … Continue reading →

Oops! We had an actual mini episode, but then due to technical issues, it was lost. So, uh, sorry. Try to imagine adaptations of games that we’d pitch, you’ll probably really enjoy it. So, instead, here’s the basic information you … Continue reading →

Ah, the good one! Continuing our Summer of Games where we devote a mini episode to a movie based on a game that actually worked out, we’re watching and discussing 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the rare game … Continue reading →

As summer finally technically begins, our summer miniseries follow suit, and what better way to kick off our Summer of Games than with a video game adaptation? Enter 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a very very long … Continue reading →

Summer has started, and with it one of customary themed mini-series! As the sun mercilessly beats down on humanity, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris retreat indoors to kick off our Summer of Games. That’s right, we’re going to be talking about … Continue reading →

The only thing that can make an unseasonably chilly April even more unsettling is throwing Helen Mirren and a CGI mansion full of grumpy ghosts into it. Commence your midnight seance to listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris watch … Continue reading →

What better time to completely disassociate and imagine you’re in a whole other world than right now? Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return to a variation on a theme of an older mini episode about fictional worlds they’d like to visit … Continue reading →

Hey darling. Are you worried? Well don’t! Unless you’re Leigh, Brendan, and Chris, because we’re rightfully worried about sitting through Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (drop the comma, it’s cleaner), an attempt to stretch a 22 minute Twilight Zone premise … Continue reading →

For our latest mini episode, we turn our attention to media that we think is unfairly ignored or maligned. Be it something so indie or low-budget that it can’t afford to get a foothold in pop culture or something wrongly … Continue reading →

If there’s a lesson that adapting books to movies has taught us time and time again, it’s that it’s hard! Sometimes what works effectively in a novel simply doesn’t translate to the visual medium of film. And sometimes someone just … Continue reading →

Sometimes we have a lot of thoughts about a movie that’s simply not bad enough to consider as part of our regular podcast. And sometimes we have a lot of thoughts about TWO movies, one of which is a remake … Continue reading →

With Valentine’s Day less than two weeks away (we regret to inform you it is now too late to maneuver reservations at any decent restaurant), Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return to the old romantic comedy well to see what bitter … Continue reading →

It’s time for another mini episode and with another mini episode comes another game… sort of! Instead of an actual game, we’re doing a draft of our top four fictional characters in media, just a list of some of the … Continue reading →

We’re ringing in 2026 with a bit of the ol’ Bayhem- specifically, 2005’s The Island, directed by explosion auteur Michael Bay and starring two Ewan McGregors, two Scarlett Johanssons, and one of almost everybody else. Suggested for discussion as an … Continue reading →

The year is nearly over! It’s closing up shop! Slam it shut, baby! Close that year! As is our wont, we recap the year and talk about the best and the worst of what we watched and drank. It’s low … Continue reading →

It’s Holiday Spectacular time, and what better way to celebrate than by watching a movie that was… mostly well received? Leigh, Brendan, and Chris’s reason for the season this year is 2022’s Happiest Season, Clea DuVall’s Christmas romcom about a … Continue reading →

It’s late November aka prime “let’s circle back to this after the holidays” season and what better way to both blow off responsibility and get ready for Christmas than by doing a full mini episode of our snack food review … Continue reading →

Return to the distant year of 1985 which will in turn return you to the distant year of 1962 with a forgotten comedy that finally dares to take the piss out of that sacrosanct topic, the Peace Corps. Naturally, this … Continue reading →

It’s Halloweek, and since we already blew our scary podcastical load on The Mummy Returns last week for the spookiest of all holidays (next to Arbor Day), we decided to do a lil Halloween game to celebrate it. Anyway, maybe … Continue reading →

It’s our Halloween Spooktacular, baby, and nothing says the spooky season like a limp underbaked sequel to a blockbuster action / horror-adjacent blockbuster based off of a 1932 Universal Studios monster movie. Naturally, we’re talking about 2001’s The Mummy Returns, … Continue reading →

What started off as a vague idea of making up a YA movie or book molted in discussion to become something else and sometimes that’s okay! Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about young adult media, be it books or movies- … Continue reading →

It’s back to school season, and what better way for us to reminisce about our distant high school memories than through the lens of a failed young adult sci-fi franchise? Return to your own far-flung youth with 2011’s I Am … Continue reading →

Summer, alas, is over (even though it’ll still be like 80 degrees for a while but now with the added fun of 7:00 pm sunsets, such fun) and with it our unhinged musicals miniseries. So long, Something Like Summer! Hello, … Continue reading →

Hey, hey, hey! BIM’s on the way! BIM’s the only way! BIM’s all the way! (?) Look, any way you may hear it, our Summer of Unhinged Musicals has reached its natural endpoint, with a movie that is unquestionably a … Continue reading →

What would summer be without summer movies to accompany it? Well, probably just insufferably hot. Thankfully, we have summer movies to distract us from (insert horrific woe here)! Leigh, Brendan, and Chris have a nice li’l chat about some of … Continue reading →

The Summer of Unhinged Musicals continues with perhaps one of the most unhinged movies we have ever covered, period. For your pleasure (?), we present 2017’s Something Like Summer, an adaptation of a self-published absurdly long young adult novel that … Continue reading →

As the year rolls swelteringly along, so does our Summer of Unhinged Musicals, and what better way commemorate this year’s miniseries than with yet another game (but one that relates to the theme)? Brendan dusts off an old chestnut from … Continue reading →

Another summer has begun, and with it, another miniseries. This year, we’re kicking off our Summer of Unhinged Musicals with a movie that… might be arguably a musical, but kind of probably isn’t. As you might be able to guess, … Continue reading →

Look, sometimes it’s very hard to come up with discussion topics and sometimes people are feeling sick so sometimes mini episodes just end up being a round table discussion of “what’s some interesting media you consumed lately?” This is one … Continue reading →

Could it, though? Could it indeed happen to you? Well, yes, it could, if by “it” you mean “watching a mid-tier 90s romantic comedy that sort of holds up.” If you mean “have a rando split a multi-million dollar lottery … Continue reading →

We’ve got a movie coming up next week that focuses pretty heavily on a diner, so why not do a food-centric mini episode accordingly? Except it’s not really about diners or coffee shops, it’s about chain restaurants, so things kinda … Continue reading →

What do you get when America’s sweetheart teams up with Ferris Bueller for a comic revenge scheme against their exes and then end up falling for each other? Well, maybe surprisingly you’d mostly get a black comedy that struggles with … Continue reading →

Our television trilogy of terror miniseries comes to an end (for now, anyway) with this mini episode, in which we finally do what we’re been musing about doing for ages and do that thing we do with movies but with … Continue reading →

Your television is a box. Your phone is a box. You listen to podcasts on it. You sit in your home, listening to Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss Richard Kelly’s 2009 movie The Box. The movie erodes your ability to … Continue reading →

Our TV-themed mini episode trilogy spins merrily along as we shift from our favorite couples to our favorite supporting characters- characters who may not show up every week, but once in a season or two they’ll get a fun recurring … Continue reading →

It’s always an interesting choice when a movie’s title is a question- indeed, the unspoken contract entered into is “at some point, this question will be answered and the answer will be relevant.” But what happens when your movie title … Continue reading →

Valentine’s Day may be several days behind us, but we’ve never been too slavishly faithful to how calendars work before and dammit we’re not about to start now. Celebrate love in all of its forms (albeit mostly romantic) as Leigh, … Continue reading →

What better way to prepare for Valentine’s Day than by watching a romantic comedy that has aged like a fine milk? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they view 1999’s Three to Tango, a stale piece of dated cinematic nonsense … Continue reading →

Look, we’re all very tired and we don’t really have a good discussion topic in mind, so it’s a game! Just go with it and have fun! Chris gives us a list of “cozy mystery” television episode titles and Leigh … Continue reading →

Several years ago, a group of filmmakers gathered together to address a problem: kids today simply don’t want to go to the opera as much as their great-great-great-grandparents possibly did. The solution to this conundrum? The Magic Flute, a 2022 … Continue reading →

It’s the end of December and per our usual custom, we are closing that year, baby! Please remember to indicate that you have closed your year by listening to this on your tax forms come January. Anyway, please enjoy our … Continue reading →

At long last, the prophecy has come true- we’re finally discussing that Christmas white whale, that rotten chestnut, that ho ho holy hell what a piece of crap movie we’ve been threatening to do for years. That’s right, for our … Continue reading →

‘Tis the Christmas season (because Thanksgiving is boring and who cares, let’s just skip over that whole bit) and what better way to celebrate it than by a third session of our patented Hallmark Christmas Movie Generator Game (patent not … Continue reading →

One must give credit to Michael Crichton, the man who created works of fiction that asked questions such as “what if Disneyland had dinosaurs” and “what if apes were jerks” and “what if Beowulf was boring and also laced with … Continue reading →

A mini episode in which Leigh, Brendan, and Chris start out discussing original fantasy movies, then muse about why there are so few good original fantasy movies, then play an impromptu and unplanned game of Kevin Degrees of Seven Bacon (an invented game based on something Leigh has dealt with from her parents where you have to determine what movie someone is trying to remember based only on the vague information they can muster up). We really cover a lot of ground here! Naturally we also introduce our next movie and accompanying cocktail, and boy is it… esoteric! Continue reading →

October is back and so is our annual Halloween Spooktacular! We’ve previously dealt with a murder AND a death, so it only makes sense that a haunting should follow suit- and this haunting is in VENICE, baby! Kenneth Branagh returns … Continue reading →

As we slowly crawl to the end of another excruciating year, the Hallo-Thanks-Mas holiday corridor creeps up along with it. As is often the case with these periods, we sometimes fall back on tried-and-true movies to rewatch (or music to … Continue reading →

Rita Mae Brown’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. On an unrelated note, in this episode Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return to the filmography of Kenneth Branagh just to see how we … Continue reading →

Remember a few weeks ago when the Borderlands movie came out and no one liked it and it flopped and we all agreed that there was no reason to talk about it ever again? Well, we're talking about it briefly. Or to be more specific, we're talking broadly about movies adapted from video games, a much-maligned niche that has only rarely ever resulted in a movie that can actually function on some level. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris muse about the innate difficulties of trying to adapt a video game in the first place, the problems that seem to affect most movie versions, and if there have ever been any successful ones in the first place (there's a few!). Join us again in two weeks when we cover some wildly different territory with a setting-shifted jukebox musical adaptation of a lesser Shakespeare play directed by someone whom we've talked about, uh, quite a bit. Hey nonny nonny! Continue reading →

Our Summer of Failed Franchises (mercifully?) comes to an end with perhaps the most flagrant franchise bait yet, Stephen Sommer's 2004 monster mash up Van Helsing. That's right, at long last you can be chilled by terrifying imagery such as Dracula cosplaying as Gerard Way, Hugh Jackman with nightmarishly bad extensions, and a Frankenstein's monster with a plasma globe jammed into his chest. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris try to make sense of these choices, along with topics such as "what the hell is going on with this world building?" and "why do werewolves keeps regenerating tattered modesty pants upon transforming back into humans?" Fittingly, we also enjoy a light summer cocktail as red and bitter as Dracula's heart. (AHHHHHH if only he had one!) Continue reading →