Diminishing Returns

Just in time for the release of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the 2025 Diminishing Returns Halloween special finally enters completion. This time, we're discussing borderline high-fantasy epic 28 Years Later. Was it worth the wait?

Rejoice! We decided to cut the wait time between this and our previous episode by 26 weeks. This time, we're looking at the middle chapter of the 28 Days Later franchise: a film that asks the question: "Is a stellar opening sequence enough to buoy an entire feature film?"

It's time for our 2025 Halloween special! Just, uh... 28 days later. There's a reason for that. Can you work out what it is? It's extremely subtle.

The boys are back with the penultimate James Bond movie (but for how long? Probably quite a while, honestly). It's finally time for Spectre (or SPECTRE?), in which Christoph Waltz amazes everyone with the shocking twist no one saw coming that he's playing Blofeld and James Bond finally finds love like he didn't already do that three movies ago. It's a real surprise of an episode where up is down, left is right and Calvin is the #1,000,000 James Bond fan on YouTube.

Significantly upping the ante from last year's pornographic Valentine's Day special (which reviewed 1972's Deep Throat), this year the show is taking on a much more modern porn movie. Including Diminisodes and the intros for classic episode re-releases, Sol has told Allen about this movie in detail several times now. But does Sugar Babies: A Cautionary Tale live up to the hype?

Merry Christmas! Chicken bucket!

We did it! All five Indiana Jones movies reviewed for your listening pleasure.

If you like hearing people complain about things, this is the Indiana Jones episode for you!

More like Indiana Jones and the Third Crusade.

Two of five.

We want more Indie cred so we're doing all of them starting with Raiders.

Boobedy-boo, the Diminishing Returns boys are back with the other half of this year's Best Picture nominees at the Academy Awards. Will the Oscar go to The Banshees of Inisherin, Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, Women Talking, Everything Everywhere All at Once (or one of the films from last episode)?

It's the annual Diminishing Returns Oscars extravaganza -- and Calvin has seen a record number of this year's Best Picture nominees! Listen for the gang's thoughts on All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Fabelmans, Tar, Triangle of Sadness and more!

We've finally done it. We've finally cut all pretenses and just covered an outright hardcore porn film for Valentine's Day. Hey, porn movies are still movies, guys.

Back so soon? It's review of the year time -- but with a twist!

Diminishing Returns is home for Christmas!

Diminishing Returns is back with a Patreon-voted horror selection. It's The Exorcist just in time for Halloween.

Big news, Dim fans.

Hey, Vern, have you heard about Diminishing Returns?

Let dey Skyfall! An dey crumbohl! James Bond is back and it's a big one.

To get everyone into the Easter spirit, we're celebrating by watching a Patreon-selected bit of religious propaganda. This time, we're going back to the God's Not Dead franchise for the third entry in the series.

The British Sitcom History Podcast is back for round three! This time, we're taking on the two movie spin-offs of controversial '60s sitcom Till Death Us Do Part -- Till Death Us Do Part (1968) and The Alf Garnett Saga (1972).

Be vewy quiet. We're hunting Oscars.

A seance brings a number of never-heard-before clips back from the dead, featuring Thomas Turgoose, Andrew Ellis, Calvin Dyson, Judey Bignell, Conor Murray, Grace Miller, Emily Slade, Nicky Diss and Cubby R. Broccoli.

Sol is single again, so the sex anecdotes are plentiful. Oh, also, we talk about Showgirls because our Patreon supporters voted for it.

Seeing out the year in style – and only a month later than everyone else did. By the way, we've heard some of you like James Bond. Listen for our (and guest Calvin Dyson's) thoughts on No Time to Die, along with a whole load of other 2021 films.

It's 2022! Time to look back at 2021, right? Hear our thoughts on everything from A Quiet Place: Part II to Coming 2 America to Gozilla vs. Kong to Mortal Kombat to The Forever Purge... and more, obviously!

It's a holiday special about a holiday special! What is this? A podcast directed by Christopher Nolan?

This episode was recorded over a year ago and has been sat on an exclusive Patreon shelf ever since thanks to The King's Man being delayed. Just like with the eventual release of our The Purge episode earlier this year, it's now a super-sexy time capsule from a more complicated time. Also: Calvin's back!

Keanuvember concludes with a look at Speed, perhaps the greatest Keanu Reeves movie of all time. Joining us are Rick Schaple and Canz Rickman (collectively: Nightmares from the Discotheque) who have written songs about things like Die Hard. Who better to talk about Die Hard on a bus?

Keanuvember rolls on with special guest Jeremy Kaplowitz and a look at Keanu's magnum opus: The Matrix (and its lesser sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions) - just in time for The Matrix Resurrections.

It's Keanuvember! Our entire month of Keanu Reeves begins with a look at the no-holds-barred John Wick franchise, thanks to special guest Alice R. Fraser!

It's an (extremely visual) live Halloween spectacular! This episode was broadcast exclusively to Patreon subscribers on the 6th of October and now you're getting a (severely truncated) audio edit. The video version will be posted to our YouTube channel closer to Halloween, so keep your eyes peeled.

It's the second-worst idea of all time as Tim Batt joins us to dredge up past trauma by revisiting Grown Ups 2, a film he watched and reviewed once a week as part of The Worst Idea of All Time podcast, back in 2014. Is Chris Rock better than this? Did South Park end Rob Schneider's career? Did Grown Ups 2 inspire Quentin Tarantino to make Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? All this and more in Diminishing Returns!

No Time to Die is (allegedly) finally being released! To mark the occasion, we're marching on from the ending of Casino Royale and straight into the beginning of Quantum of Solace, the Bond movie that was infamously written on the fly thanks to the 2007 writers' strike. Will Sol stay true to his contrarian nature and actually like this one? Someone's got to because Calvin certainly doesn't.

The British Sitcom History Podcast is back for its second series, so it's crossover episode #2: this time looking at the film that singlehandedly relaunched the Britcom movie genre.

Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman... well, we definitely say it five times over the course of this episode, so that's what happened to us if this ends up being the last episode of Diminishing Returns. Yes, Calvin is here to help us tackle the Candyman trilogy (the 1992 original, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh and Candyman: Day of the Dead) as well as to discuss the upcoming 2021 Candyman sequel / reboot from Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele.

We're joined by Grammar Girl herself, Mignon Fogarty, for a look at Denis Villeneuve's Oscar-nominated, language-based sci-fi movie in which Amy Adams attempts to communicate with space aliens against a ticking clock. Will the show ever get the phrase "cinema unawarité" added to the dictionary? Is the video game Fortnite a pun? Do Allen and Sol like the film more than back when they covered it as part of 2017's Oscar season? All this a more in this edition of Diminishing Returns! This year is the 15th anniversary of the Grammar Girl podcast, so it's an extremely proven entity at this point. Head here to give it a listen: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

It's outtakes time, leds! Featuring everything from James Bond to zombies to Fifty Shades of filth.

Space Jam, I always wanted you to go into space, jam (intergalactic Chris). Yes, our latest offering is a deep dive into the peak-'90s cinematic monstrosity that is Space Jam. Joining us is special guest, animation expert and host of numerous Laser Time podcast network shows, Chris Antista!

Calvin's back, everyone! Well, sort of. This episode was recorded over a year ago to coincide with the original release of The Forever Purge. When COVID delayed the movie, this episode got put on a shelf... until now! We walk through every last entry in the The Purge franchise, even the TV series!

We're joined by Chan-fan, Imran Yusuf, for a Jackie Chan deep-dive focused on 1986 martial arts classic Armour of God.

We're joined by musician, former editor of MAD Magazine and all round quality-comedy-person, Allie Goertz, for a look at one of her favourite non-Simpsons things: 1998 Wes Anderson movie, Rushmore.

The ever informative Dr. Wendy Walsh (Mating Matters, Time Magazine Person of the Year 2017) joins us to discuss classic rom-com Pretty Woman (and to psychoanalyse Allen's sex-life). Is the classic Julia Roberts / Richard Gere pairing a fluffy fairytale dream or an insidious, problematic nightmare? Listen to find out.

In a heartfelt apology for the hilarious April Fools' prank we pulled last month, here's a sincere, legitimate bit of film analysis focused in on the 2006 version of Casino Royale - the real one, starring Daniel Craig - that you wanted to hear us discuss in the first place.

It's the fifth annual Diminishing Returns Oscars special, in which Sol and Allen review each of 2021's Best Picture nominees in the order of least to most diverse.

With the new Mortal Kombat movie in our sights, Diminishing Returns take a trip back to 1995's cinematic abomination, directed by Sol's arch-enemy, Paul W.S. Anderson. Joining us for this, as well as a look at 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, is writer, host of Stream Economy and Senior Editor of CNET, Ashley Esqueda!

It's an exciting week at Diminishing Returns as we're joined by Calvin Dyson to finally discuss Casino Royale. Will this be the James Bond movie to win over Sol and Allen?

It's time for our annual Diminishing Returns Easter Special where we take a look at a piece of religious cinema. We let Patreon choose the film we'd cover and they wanted The Wicker Man. We threw in the awkward spiritual sequel The Wicker Tree as well, because we're nice like that. There's even talk of the unmade third Wicker Man movie, The Wrath of the Gods.

To celebrate our landmark 250th episode, we let our Patreon-subscribers decide which film we should cover again (out of everything in our first 200 episodes). They wanted us to do You Only Live Twice... twice.