The Pick: Boiler Room

With Fast X currently in theaters, we’re taking a look back at Vin Diesel’s early career, back when he wasn’t exclusively racing cars and being Groot in movies. However, what we didn’t expect when picking Boiler Room was that we’d actually be getting a whole lot of Giovanni Ribisi, which was just as much of a pleasant surprise as this mostly-forgotten film was as a whole. It’s a welcome addition to the “bad dudes being bad” genre of kinetic filmmaking, and also sees us unsurprisingly inducting Ben Affleck into the three-timers club as well as (surprisingly) doing the same for Nicky Katt. Continue reading →

The Pick: 42

This week we’re talkin’ baseball in honor of the plethora of sports going on now by taking a look at a movie celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, 42. It’s a movie that’s plenty likable but probably could’ve been better if it had been put in the hands of a director more distinct than Hollywood journeyman Brian Helgeland. We also share our thoughts on baseball movies as a whole as well as our favorites (and not-quite favorites) of what very well may be the sport that translates best to movies. Also, John taste tests some new flavors of Doritos on mic, so there’s your trigger warning if you find the sound of people eating off-putting. Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of April 2022

Apologies for the fact that we’re already a few days removed from April and that most of these albums actually came out in March. But well, I’m just a little backlogged with albums to listen to. The Spring tends to be the most fruitful time for music releases (both in the pop sphere and for the critical darlings), and 2023 is shaping up to be a fairly normal year in that regard after a couple years of general album release unpredictability. I’ll admit that almost all of these artists are fairly established, but maybe that’s what happens when you’re just reviewing music that came out fairly recently, as the more under-the-radar artists can tend to slip through the cracks and reveal themselves as the year rolls along. Continue reading →

The Pick: Willard (2003)

If for some reason you’re looking for real sickos content, then look no further than our discussion of the 2003 remake of the furry horror flick Willard. It’s perhaps the most divided response the three of us have had to a movie reviewed on The Pick, since one of us liked the movie quite a bit, and one of us did not at all. We get into both how this Willard relates to the 1971 original and its apparently musical sequel, as well as how the later Willard managed to pull off so many grotesque rat sequences with very little CG. So have a listen, you dirty rats! Continue reading →

The Pick: Three Thousand Years of Longing

Your wish is our command! Assuming your wish was for us to record a somewhat delayed review of an 8-month-old movie that not enough people saw in theaters. This week we’re talking about George Miller’s strange and sultry follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road while also providing a brief history of djinns as well as our own answers to what our three wishes would be. We also follow up our last episode on the 90s Super Mario Bros. movie by talking about the new Super Mario Bros. Movie, which seems to be just a hair better than that prior notorious adaptation. Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of Winter 2023

I’ve been wanting to get back into reviewing my favorite albums on a (roughly) monthly basis just as I did last year, but it’s been a little hard. The early months of a year in music usually take a little while to take shape, as there’s a decent amount of spill-over from the year before spent listening to albums that made a lot of Best of the Year lists. Also, these past months have been a bit slow in terms of big-deal artists releasing albums, though it seems that things are starting to pick up these last few weeks. However, I’ll probably save reviewing more recent releases for the end of this month, after I have the chance to really spend some decent listening time with them.

But for now, let’s take a look at some albums from January, February, and March of this year, which I’ll just broadly refer to as Winter 2023, a season we can now safely say is in the rearview. Continue reading →

The Pick: Super Mario Bros.

After our usual end-of-the-year and Oscar-induced break, we’re back with another season of The Pick! On the eve of a new Mario movie coming out this week, we take a look back at the first time Hollywood attempted to bring this massively popular but hard-to-adapt property to the big screen. So far, reviews of the new Mario Bros. movie seem to be mixed, but will it still end up being as derided as 1993’s Super Mario Bros.? It’s a little hard to imagine, since in this episode we get into how bad of a representation of the video games this movie is, though there are plenty of things to enjoy about its distinct production value and casting, even if a lot of it ends up being a big goopy mess. Continue reading →