Peak Viewing

Star Trek: Insurrection is a film of peaks and valleys. On the one hand, the villain isn’t particularly memorable and the drone special effects suck. On the other hand, it provides some pretty damning commentary on the perils of forced relocation. But then back on the other hand, it muddies the forced relocation message with a bunch of twists out of nowhere! All of this left us very mixed. Does this movie feel like TV? Should Data have died? Is Picard correct in his choices? All that and more!

The most well-regarded Next Gen movie is First Contact, but does it deserve that recognition? Yes! This time travel romp is an exciting adventure that pretty expertly weaves together all the things that make Star Trek so special. We get into all that plus the historic week we had that made this movie even more special, our touching personal history with this film, browser-based movie games, more donut talk than you could ever imagine, and a potential lucrative laser tag sponsorship.

It’s time to enter a new era of Star Trek films. Last week we said goodbye to (most of) the original cast, today we say hello to the Next Generation! This film is a classic example of the “passing the baton” sequel we see attempted often nowadays, and on that front it mostly succeeds. Where it struggles is with the writing, as most of the dialogue is egregious and forgettable technobabble. We discuss all that as well as why this feels like television, how underserved this cast is, and how fun this Enterprise would be to explore.

This week we make it to the end of the Star Trek movies with the original series cast. The final swan song for this crew somehow features a murder mystery, courtroom drama, a prison escape, and lots of touching moments of finality for this original cast. Topics discussed include Samuel’s less-than-ideal peak viewing experience, Klingons learning all the wrong lessons from Shakespeare, the Jetsons, and the best drinking buddy in Star Trek.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is perhaps best described as a mess. Shatner’s only time in the director’s seat produced a Star Trek film with strange tone, questionable villain writing, hasty visual effects, and some fantastic science fiction ideas. It ultimately left us with more questions than answers. Why does this light jokey tone feel so much worse than last week? Why is Sybok’s whole deal revealed so late? Who thought it was a good idea to have Kirk free solo El Capitan? And what does god need with a spaceship?

If you were three movies deep into the Star Trek series and getting annoyed at how self-serious it was, then Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home should hit you like a cold lemonade on a hot summer day. This light and airy time travel romp with space whales is more a comedy than anything else. We discuss how to get into the right headspace to enjoy this lighter tone, how we think the transporter works, the incredible behind the scenes stories of this movie’s most iconic sounds, and why we’re dreading next week’s sequel.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is unfortunately not very good! An emphasis on bringing back Spock means that the other subplots have to a take the backseat, and as a result nothing of consequence or importance really happens in this movie until the last five minutes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good podcast dissecting this one as we discuss how we would improve this screenplay, Klingon women, toe dexterity, and of course, a Vulcan case of blue balls.

Ask any Star Trek fan what the best Star Trek movie is, and a lot of them will tell you it’s The Wrath of Khan. Like most Star Trek stories, it’s a mishmash of ideas: you’ve got a villain-of-the-week from the original series, Kirk’s inability to confront failure and death, a powerful device that can create (and eat) planets, all wrapped up in a distinctly naval theme with a strong Moby Dick metaphor. It’s a lot, and it’s mostly pretty good! We dig into all this, plus our pitch for a Yoda family movie, why Henry has critic brain even if he doesn’t want it, and the conundrum of telling ordinary stories in an extraordinary setting.

This miniseries we’re boldly going where no podcast has gone before! Wait, actually there are a lot of Star Trek podcasts… Well then, we’re going somewhere we’ve never gone before, and that’s 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture! While this film might have more in common with slow cinema than it does with the Kelvin timeline films we’re used to, there’s still plenty to enjoy with it’s heavy themes and (albeit touched up) visual effects. We get into all that plus our personal history with Star Trek, the many revisions to the Enterprise design, and what William Shatner has been up to lately.

In 2026, Peak Viewing covered The Bride!… on a DARE. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s sophomore film felt like a nice coda to the Frankenstein series we did last year, so we added it to the slate. Having now seen it, do we still want to do an episode? We would prefer not to. The film itself is kind of a headache inducing beautiful mess, but that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss everything to do with the often remarkable visuals, what we think this movie is trying to communicate, and how relatable cinephile Frankenstein is.

It’s been a long miniseries, but the day is finally here: we’re becoming made men. Not in the Italian mafia or anything, just men who made a podcast about Goodfellas! We’re finally discussing what is arguably the crowning achievement of Scorsese’s career, and the most enduring and enjoyable gangster movie of all time. That Copacobana shot? We got it! The duality of glorifying and condemning the organized crime lifestyle? It’s here! Fun and terrifying anecdotes from the book Wiseguy? Samuel has them! All that, plus our (frankly pretty bad) Scorsese rankings.

This Last Temptation of Christ is arguably Scorsese’s most controversial film (at least at the time of release). This passion project that was years in the making is less about retelling the Gospels and more about struggling with the eternal conflict between spirit and flesh. As two non-believers, we were pretty impressed! We discuss why this interpretation of Jesus Christ is one of the most compelling we’ve seen, why reading the book this is based on before watching may not be a good idea (not a Bible joke by the way, this is actually based on a book), and make about a half dozen comparisons to contemporary films.

The Color of Money delivers on a lot of fronts: hot young Tom Cruise, old (but still hot) Paul Newman, and enough great pool shots to fill the two hour runtime. Still, it’s perhaps an outlier in this miniseries, in the sense that it’s the least “like” a Martin Scorsese movie. Also, did Marty Supreme and Top Gun: Maverick both rip off this movie? Did Scorsese have other things on his mind while making this? Does this compare favorably as a sequel to the stone-cold classic The Hustler? How is this all connected to first person shooters?

For the second week in a row Scorsese is leaning into his more humorous side, this time with the thriller parody After Hours. We found this convoluted plot needed quite a bit of buy-in, but once you do there is plenty of fun to be had. As we sprint around the winding streets of SoHo, we discuss potential titles for a follow-up film, revisiting the Star Wars sequels, the archaic concept of having no “cash” on you, how well this movie would work as an adventure game, and Henry fundamentally not understanding the math Samuel does in his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Babe wake up, a new Benoit Blanc mystery came out! Wake Up Dead Man is a movie with a lot of things on it’s mind: faith, truth, pragmatism, confession, Our Current Moment, judgment, guilt, compassion, sheep, wolves, all wrapped up in an extremely well told Biblical allegory. We’re big fans, even if we have a qualm or two. After making sure we spoil the ending of the movie in the first five minutes, we discuss induction stoves, using VHS tapes in 2025, Hillbilly Elegy, Netflix buying Warner Brothers, and much more.

Mean Streets feels like an upgrade in (almost) every way from Scorsese’s first film, continuing a lot of the same kinds of characters and situations we saw there. Neither of us have been wowed yet in this miniseries, but we’re certainly getting a better idea of what Scorsese is all about! We also talk about directors and their fetishes, how hard it is to exercise, working with friends, and the lack of resolution in this film. We also do our best to not devolve into stereotypical Italian-American accents, and let’s just say we did not always succeed!

Scorsese’s second film is similar to his first, in the sense that we can really only recommend it for completionism purposes. Outside of a few very impressive stylistic flourishes, the bulk of this movie is exploitation sensuality and violence. If that’s your thing, you’ll have a great time! If you wish the titular Bertha and her interiority were the focus, you’ll be let down! Other topics discussed include the sketchy origins around the source book, the board game Monopoly, Samuel’s new last name, car aerodynamics, and the eternal question: is it better to be nailed to the cross through your wrists or your palms?

Martin Scorsese, arguably one of the greatest living filmmakers, is an embarrassingly large blind spot for the both of us. To remedy this, our next miniseries will cover the first half or so of his career, of which we have seen very little! (Like, almost nothing. It’s bad.) While his first film Who’s That Knocking at My Door won’t be one we wholeheartedly recommend, it is interesting groundwork for a lot of the themes and styles we expect to come up. Just don’t ask us to fly to Europe and insert a sex scene into the middle of this podcast.

Settle in and pour yourself a tall glass of milk, it’s time to talk about Guillermo del Toro’s new Frankenstein adaptation! This Netflix original is all peaks and valleys for us; some parts work, many parts do not. Some moments offer interesting twists on the novel, and some story beats unique to this film have us scratching our heads. We get into all of that, including our final ranking of Frankenstein films, and the announcement of our next miniseries!

Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is… kind of amazing? We’re not exactly shocked that culture has spent the past 30 years ignoring this movie, but we’re certainly disappointed. This loud, melodramatic adaptation of the monster story is not only the most faithful in terms of plot, but also in terms of tone. As a result, we’re big fans! Just don’t ask us what was going on with those eels in the leathery sac. Other topics include the prevalence of canine cruelty in our movies this year, Freudian adult film genres, and yet another haunting supernatural event live on the air.

Two years ago, we watched Hammer’s rendition of The Mummy, and we were not impressed. One year ago, we watched Hammer’s rendition of Dracula, and we were blown away! This week, we watched Hammer’s rendition of Frankenstein, and we were, uh, somewhere in the middle? Between the frankly bad monster makeup, the lazy storylines, and the incredible mad scientist lab, it’s safe to say we have mixed feelings. We also get into buying Peter Cushing as a 22-year-old ladies man, the changes with the monster from the novel, and our brilliant idea for a new podcast.

Bride of Frankenstein is a solid contender for the most unhinged sequel of all time. It’s a marvelous blend of humor, horror, whimsy, and sadness that keeps you on your toes every minute. There’s little lab-grown people in jars, interesting reinterpretations of scenes from the novel, a picnic in a tomb, and almost five minutes of screen time for the titular character! We get into it all, including James Whale’s terrific imagination, the censor’s terrible buffoonery, Elsa Lanchester’s towering hairdo, and much more.

Monsters are back on the menu! After we had a grand time covering Dracula and Nosferatu films last year, this year we’re talking about Frankenstein to coincide with Guillermo Del Toro’s new spin on the old classic. We’re starting with 1931’s Frankenstein, the James Whale film that arguably set the standard for what Frankenstein would mean more so than the original novel. You better believe we’ve got everything in this jam-packed episode. Simpsons references! Quotes from passages in the novel! Stories about little girls and hard-boiled eggs! Listen for our hour-long “speed run” recap of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, and don’t forget: the scientist is named Frankenstein.

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World might be the most underseen movie we’ve covered on this show (well, maybe the most underseen this century). Part of that obscurity is due to the Islamophobic times in which it was created, and part of it is that it’s simply just okay at best. Some of the questions we do our best to answer this week include: Could we write a 500-page report? How well did this movie perform in Romania? Why do we keep bringing up so many Coen brothers movies? Is Tiger Woods the Michael Jordan of golf? And how much of this thing is even shot in India?

Is Albert Brooks losing his edge? It’s the question posited by 1999’s The Muse, in which Brooks plays a screenwriter who feels left behind in a frustrating and absurd Hollywood. As he tells a story that would seem to be inspired by his own life, we find ourselves more disinterested than in previous films. Naturally, we take that feeling and channel it into several off-topic tangents! Mobile games that no one has ever played! Debates over covering Avatar: Fire and Ash! Something about a comedian named James Carr! And also, quite possibly the most diabolical Would You Rather scenario of all time.

Brooks follow-up to Defending Your Life is a smaller, simpler movie about what gets passed on from mother to son. As two sons of two mothers, we have some takes! While this is ultimately perhaps the least-relatable to us of this miniseries, we still discuss Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds’ chemistry, the multiple references to movies we’ve covered on this show, off-brand Snickers, document storage, calling your mother, and of course, all the mediocre songs in Mary Poppins.

As Ari Aster put it, Defending Your Life is “the feel-good movie for people who identify as feeling routinely bad.” Albert Brooks vision of the afterlife may be fully realized and wondrous, but it’s what it has to say about our own plane of existence that is really profound. We discuss everything about it, along with what clips would play at our own trials, the one or two poorly aged jokes, and how Henry almost died this week.

This week we talk about Lost in America, the mid-life crisis movie to end all mid-life crisis movies. Albert Brooks is skewering baby boomers who watched Easy Rider one too many times, and we’re asking the big questions. What age do you have to be to consider it a “mid-life” crisis? How much is the nest egg in 2025 dollars? What’s the deal with New York, New York? Could you live in a Winnebago long-term? And what’s the right age to watch Airplane?

Picture a man. Now give him all of the worst, most awful (non-violent) possessive traits you can imagine. Now picture a movie all about this man, and you might have something approximating Albert Brooks’ sophomore feature, Modern Romance. This damning indictment of the modern dating man was written decades before terms like “toxic masculinity” entered our everyday vocabulary, and for that reason it has an almost timeless quality to its satire. In between groaning over this man, we also discuss the fun meta filmmaking scenes, the terrible DVD cover, and how much Henry’s couch looks like the one in the movie.

Today we embark on a journey through the comedies of Albert Brooks. His first film, 1979’s Real Life, is a wonderful send up of reality TV, a genre of entertainment that effectively didn’t even exist yet! We discuss the myriad of ways this movie was ahead of it’s time, the interconnected web of alt comedians in this time period, a few embarrassing film blinds spots we still have, and of course, the Jumbotron CEO.

We’re taking one last dip into the Coens filmography with Ethan and Tricia’s new film Honey Don’t! This may not exactly be a "great" movie, but it’s enough of a step-up from Drive-Away Dolls that we both walked away somewhat impressed. We share our observations on audience reactions, IMDb plot keyword sickos, the hottest new addictive mobile game, and how we can no longer trust our own moviegoing opinions.

Tony Scott’s 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 is unfortunately the kind of remake that has all the edges sanded off. What was once a story about corruption and scorn in the hearts of all men has been retooled into a tale of just two men, one on a righteous path and the other tumbling down the crime-ridden ravine. Are they different? Are they the same? What was Henry’s secret agenda from last week? Why did Bill Clinton endorse Cuomo? And what the hell is MovieIQ?!

Our shortest miniseries to date focuses on two films, the original from the 1970s and the remake in the late aughts. This week we’re talking about 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the original story of criminals hijacking a New York subway car. Samuel read the book, and he’s disturbed! Henry heard the dialogue, and he’s delighted! We discuss the flavorful style of this movie, from the performances to the music, and tease a secret agenda behind this miniseries…

Now that we’re done with the movies Joel and Ethan Coen made together, we move on to the “solo” projects. We already covered The Tragedy of Macbeth last year as part of our Denzel Washington miniseries, so it’s on to Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls, a lesbian road comedy made with his wife Tricia Cooke. This movie (which we both found to be equal parts strange, funny, and bad) has its fair share of topic starters, so please enjoy our unhinged discussion on character actor cameos, southern accents, lesbian bars, and, of course, dildos. Way more dildo discussion than you would probably expect.

This week we discuss the final (?) film Joel and Ethan Coen made together, a western anthology that is tonally all over the place. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs may not be our favorite movie from the two brothers, but there is something remarkable about seeing all their styles and themes blended into six particular stories. In this tangent-filled episode we also discuss Detroit: Become Human, the origins of Samuel’s caffeine addictions, if Kevin Costner and James Cameron will ever get to finish their passion projects, an update to our Coens Tonal Alignment Chart, and our final rankings of their entire collaborative filmography.

As far as Hollywood send-ups go, Hail, Caesar! is pretty good. As far as Coen brothers movies go, Hail, Caesar! is… well, it’s near the bottom of our rankings. That’s not to say that this star-studded satire isn’t worth your time, it’s just, eh… we haven’t an opinion. On this episode we also get into Henry’s secret undercover job, Spielberg’s forgotten WWII film, and Hobie’s failure to keep it so simple.

This week we need no carpet on our floor. Come along and follow us as we talk about Inside Llewyn Davis, a love letter to the early 60s folk scene that is also one of the Coens most well-crafted stories. So don’t miss the train we’re on, don’t know that we’re gone, listen on as we discuss the film and go on tangents about what the best desserts are, Samuel’s hot (or not hot!) takes on leftovers, the eternal battle of Beyonce vs. Taylor Swift, and of course, Shachtmanism.

It’s time to go back to the Wild West and discuss the western masterpiece True Grit. The Coen brothers’ second film based on a novel is another grounded no-nonsense work of adaptation, but they still find plenty of avenues to insert their own unique voice. In between comparing this to the (great) Charles Portis novel, we also discuss Hailee Steinfeld’s wonderful performance, Carter Burwell’s effective score, leaf blowers, the unconditional affection of snakes, and how much you have to drink before you can call yourself an alcoholic.

Today’s Coen brothers film is perhaps their most idiosyncratic, an enigmatic and existential nightmare with more questions than answers. And while A Serious Man grapples with the hard-hitting questions as to the nature of our universe, we’re asking the really stupid ones! What’s the optimal office cubicle setup? Why are TV antennas not a solved problem? And what’s that movie where a character is a secretary but they actually call it something else and that’s part of it?

This week we’re getting in a run and talking about the raw intelligence with Burn After Reading, Joel and Ethan's zany follow-up to No Country for Old Men that remains a somewhat under-seen gem. Between the dancing gifs, wacky performances, and memorable lines, this is a very iconic movie that’s near and dear to both Henry and Samuel. So buckle up, keep an eye on everyone, and report back to us when it makes sense. After all, we’re not set up to mold hard rubber.

Bust out your air guns and lucky quarters, it’s finally time to talk about arguably the most celebrated and beloved Coen brothers film, No Country for Old Men. Based off of the 2005 Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, this film is a wonderful example of how adaptation can be an additive process instead of simply reductive. We get into the comparisons between the two works of art, along with plenty of tangents about why 2007 was an amazing year for film, the peak ways of viewing this movie, our own semi-forgettable first-time watching experiences, Ed’s grandiose soliloquies, Kelly Macdonald’s underrated performance, and of course, the hair.

No film has been more forgotten in the Coens filmography than The Ladykillers, their stab at a 1955 British comedy set in the 21st-century American South. Like many movies we cover on this show, it falls into the realm of peaks and valleys. Everything Tom Hanks is doing? A peak! Joel and Ethan trying to write Black characters? A valley! As we try to untangle our feelings about this macabre and surreal film we also discuss Roderick Jaynes’ disdain for it, Irma P. Hall making Cannes Film Festival history, and exciting new theories about body odor. Plus: we mispronounce Apichatpong Weerasethakul!

We are returning to the Coen brothers to finish off the second half of their career after covering the first half last year. Starting off this week is Intolerable Cruelty, the forgotten romcom that came right in the middle of their less-appreciated early 00s run. Despite it’s lackluster central romance, we still find plenty to talk about relating to George Clooney’s teeth, asses getting nailed, why you shouldn’t do your taxes before watching this film, and of course, the legal ramifications of physically destroying a prenuptial agreement.