The Seventh Annual Criterion Month Draft

It’s that time of year again, when we take a break from the many blockbusters crowding our theaters and take a look back at cinema’s past and all of its various artistic triumphs and oddities. This year, Sean tries to power through some of his Criterion box sets, John picks some Tarantino favs as well as horror-adjacent curiosities, and I just try to remember what old movies I’ve seen before. This is always one of the more fun podcasts we do each year, and this one is no exception. We’ll see you in Criterion Month! Continue reading →

The Pick: Mamma Mia!/Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Since this will be our last episode of The Pick for a little while, it’s overstuffed with plenty to keep you satisfied as we set our sights on Criterion Month. Not only do we review both 2008’s Mamma Mia! and its questionable yet miraculous sequel, we also sneak in a mini-review of Fast X, which is somewhere in between a Little Pick and a Big Pick. It’s an episode that serves as an ode to the fact that frivolous entertainment is nonetheless worthy of discussion and that any actor has the right to star in a musical no matter how underwhelming of a singer they are. Continue reading →

The People’s Albums #10: Greatest Hits

Well, hello there. Instead of taking a look back at my favorite new music of the last month or so, I figured I’d switch things up and return to an old recurring feature that I’m still technically pretty close to finishing but also feel very far away from finishing. With this entry, I finally break the top 10 of America’s best-selling albums of all time. I can’t promise that I’ll get through the top 10 any quicker than the other 40 albums I’ve reviewed over the last 10 years (Jesus Christ), since these will be especially ubiquitous albums that will be hard to find anything new to say about. Which might explain why it took me so long to get around to writing about this particular album.

Album: Greatest Hits
Artist: Elton John
Release Date: November 1974 (Hard to believe an album can be this popular and also leave no trace of its exact release date on the internet.)
Copies Sold In The U.S.: 17 million Continue reading →

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 →