by | April 27, 2026 · 12:00 AM

133 – Winchester

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 the 2018 horror half-effort Winchester, a movie about the fictionalized version of the fictionalized version of a rich old lady who decided to have fun building a big ol’ house. We discuss the various versions of the “true story” of the Winchester house, the perils of trying to take cinematic advantage of a house that you can neither film in nor adequately recreate, and the endless edging that is 90 plus minutes of attempted jump scares. We also have an herbal California-style gimlet, designed to be almost as effective as large quantities of laudanum at messing you up.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | April 13, 2026 · 12:00 AM

132.5 – Part of That World (More So)

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 or live in and instead talk about the ones they’d actually like to participate in narratively. Perhaps you too have always wished you could live as a playwright’s wife in 1950s New York City and sling gin-soaked barbs with the best of them! We also cover the movie we’ll be doing next (a horror film for the SPOOOOOOKIEST season, late April) and the herbal / sunshine cocktail that will hopefully make it go down easier.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | March 30, 2026 · 12:00 AM

132 – Don’t Worry Darling

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 into an interminable 2 hours plus. Listen along as we discuss the frustrations of spending two hours watching a movie that you’re already ahead of after ten minutes, the confusing world of the story (both “real” and SHOCKING SPOILERS virtual), and trying to make sense of who knows what and why they’re doing what and how shitty that makes them. Thankfully, we have a period-appropriate cocktail (in so much as anything can be period appropriate here) to make us slightly drunk as we watch the movie. Again, this is somehow over two hours. Do worry darlings.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | March 16, 2026 · 12:00 AM

131.5 – Unsung and Underappreciated

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 slandered, we’ve got a lot of stuff to advocate for. Listen as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss media that runs the gamut from video games to movies to television. Naturally, we also discuss something that’s probably more accurately disparaged- namely, our next ill-fated movie to view and discuss. Don’t worry, darling, we also have a drink to make it go down smoother.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | March 2, 2026 · 12:00 AM

131 – The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

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 makes a mess of the whole thing and creates a cinematic example of missing the point. Such is 2008’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, a passion project of its writer / director that still manages to strip away almost everything that makes the source material interesting. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss this mercifully short yet incredibly meandering misfire and discuss topics such as “would a department store mannequin have given a more compelling lead performance?” and “why did Nick Nolte eat a bowl of gravel before filming his scenes?” and “what exactly are the titular mysteries of Pittsburgh anyway?” On the bright side, we got a really good coffee cocktail out of this whole mess!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | February 16, 2026 · 12:00 AM

130.5 – Sabrina (1954) v. Sabrina (1995)

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 of the other. And sometimes it’s improbably both the original and remake of a movie that came out years ago. That’s right, this week we’re spending a LOT of time discussing the movies Sabrina, both the classic 1954 Billy Wilder original starring Audrey Hepburn and the 1995 Sydney Pollack remake starring Julia Ormond. What would possess someone to remake a beloved classic starring one of the most iconic actors of all time? Could the remake possibly be the better movie despite NOT having Audrey Hepburn or Billy Wilder? Why would someone be infatuated with Greg Kinnear when Harrison Ford is right there? Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris exorcise their thoughts on this subject while briefly introducing next episode’s movie and the accompanying cocktail. Yes, we know it’s an ironically long mini episode, but hey, it’s close to Valentine’s Day so why not have some romantic comedy pleasantness?

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | February 2, 2026 · 12:00 AM

130 – Chances Are

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 muddied water can be drawn from it. And boy, is that bitter water muddied with things like incest, vague mob dramas, and reincarnation! That’s right, our movie this February is 1989’s Chances Are, starring Cybill Shepherd as a grieving widow and Robert Downey Jr. as her daughter’s love interest / the reincarnation of her dead husband’s soul. Nothing complicated here! We kick around a lot of the nonsense thrown onto this movie, but namely, “why would anyone want to create a movie where a dead man comes back to Earth and is split between romancing his daughter and his wife?” Not to mention the resolution! We’ve also got some hot tea-based cocktail to accompany this to keep us both warm and too drunk to reconcile the deeply upsetting intricacies of the movie.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | January 19, 2026 · 12:00 AM

129.5 – Character All-Stars Draft

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 best ones out there! Leigh, Brendan, and Chris go serpentine and snatch up our faves while trying to avoid stepping on anyone else’s toes. On top of that, we’ve got our annual Valentine’s Day romantic comedy episode coming up soon, so we talk about the deeply bizarre movie we’ll be covering in two weeks (along with a wintery cocktail to warm our hearts when the movie cannot).

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | January 5, 2026 · 12:00 AM

129 – The Island

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 example of “dumb entertainment,” the movie is mostly notable for 1) Michael Bay’s take on what seems to be at heart a 1970s conspiracy sci-fi thriller 2) an out-of-character financial flop for Bay and 3) being the focus of a lawsuit by the creative team of 1979’s Parts: The Clonus Horror, which it (allegedly!) rips off pretty aggressively. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss all this and more (like what vague plot points really just don’t make a lick of sense) while imbibing on a wintery cocktail. Sadly, we could not get Aquifina product placement for the drink.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | December 22, 2025 · 12:00 AM

128.5 – The Closing of the Year IX

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 key! We’re also kicking off 2026 with a big expensive sci-fi / action mess, so listen up for more info about that. Happy holidays and happy new year, be cool and nice.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | December 8, 2025 · 12:00 AM

128 – Happiest Season

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 lesbian couple who find themselves terrorized by both the straights and the trappings of the holiday. But why did Chris suggest that we this ostensibly good movie when the Jim Carrey Grinch is still allowed to exist? Can you enjoy an otherwise solid movie when the central crux of the plot is so troubled? What the hell are Victor Garber’s political leanings? Will Brendan enjoy seeing footage of his beloved childhood mall? Well, it wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t wrap up all these questions with a festive bow AND enjoy a toasty seasonal cocktail while doing it. Happy holidays, everyone!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | November 24, 2025 · 12:00 AM

127.5 – Eat It or Beat It

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 game “Eat It or Beat It?” That’s right, there is no better way. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we eat a lone pumpkin spice sweet in remembrance of the autumn, gimmicky Christmas candies, and even some weird holiday amalgamation of sugary confection from across the pond. We also briefly go into our upcoming Holiday Spectacular movie (it’s neither a Hallmark OR Lifetime one this time!) along with the cozy hot cocktail we’ll be downing whilst cinematically going home for the holidays.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | November 10, 2025 · 12:00 AM

127 – Volunteers

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 could only refer to the comedy Volunteers, a movie whose most lasting contribution to modern culture was ensuring the birth of Chet Haze. Listen in on your old-fashioned ham radio as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about Tom Hanks’s spot-on old money New England accent work, what jokes manage to still hold up (shockingly, not the ones where an east Asian character keeps mixing up the letters R and L), and why all the heroic characters will probably still be killed by villainous vengeance-seeking gangs as soon as the credits roll. And hey, we knock it out of the park again with a pretty great cocktail to make this whole ordeal feel like less of a chore than it was!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | October 27, 2025 · 12:00 AM

126.5 – Hallmark Halloween Havoc

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 you haven’t noticed but Hallmark is slightly dipping its white Canadian 90s celebrity toes into making movies for Halloween with the same sort of bland competence it brings to Christmas. As is only right given that we have played our patent-pending the Hallmark Christmas movie generator game multiple times before on this podcast, we’ve decided to do a spooky version where we attempt to make the blandest, safest Halloween-themed movies possible while still drenched with the trappings of the season. Join us for a few rounds of this old favorite, and naturally we also briefly kick around our upcoming movie and cocktail combo. Happy Halloween / blehhhhh!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | October 13, 2025 · 12:00 AM

126 – The Mummy Returns

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, a movie that proves there’s nothing scarier than a vain attempt to make lightning strike twice (or a CGI Rock scorpion centaur, take your pick). Slip into some comfortable gold body paint as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss what the deal is with sequels in general, how Jonathan got screwed over here, and why the Scorpion King is even here in the first place. Plus, we have a themed cocktail that’s really great! Like, one of our best! It’s SCAAARY how much we liked it! Anyway, happy early Halloween!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | September 29, 2025 · 12:00 AM

125.5 – Anatomy of a Young Adult Movie

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- what they are comprised of, what makes them work, and if we can identify them when we see them. We’ve also got our Halloween Spooktacular rising like a full moon in the distance, with a suitably SPOOOOOKY movie being featured (eh, not really) and a suitably DELICIOOOUUUS cocktail accompanying it (we hope).

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | September 15, 2025 · 12:00 AM

125 – I Am Number Four

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 Number Four, one of many attempts to make “Twilight but for boys” that simply didn’t take. Listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we discuss literary crap factory overseer James Frey, the “designed by committee” world that this movie confusingly creates, and the perils of casting an Abercrombie & Fitch ad that a witch turned into a real boy as the lead of your film. Also we have a suitably orange cocktail to accompany this whole mess, a fitting reminder of that time when we colortimed all movies to be orange and blue in lieu of actually making them visually appealing.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | September 1, 2025 · 12:00 AM

124.5 – Fiction Flashbacks

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, customary teen movie to kick off the school year! As we briefly discuss the teen sci-fi adaptation we’ll be covering two weeks from now, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris also talk about some other teen fiction- namely, stuff they wrote when they were teens (or younger). How much did we just rip off other media we liked? How many random topics could we cram into one work of fiction with no regard for logic or coherence? How many times did Leigh write something where a character gets amnesia (spoiler, they all have amnesia)? Did anything at all hold up to our jaded modern perspectives? Listen and find out, won’t you?

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | August 18, 2025 · 12:00 AM

124 – The Apple

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 musical. And boy, what a nonsense of a musical it is! Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they attempt to make sense of 1980’s The Apple, directed by schlockmeister lunatic par excellence, Menahem Golan. Is it a modern-day retelling of the very beginning and very end of the Bible? Is it a movie fascinated by queer people that also thinks they’re wicked and sinful? Is it a disco musical that also seems to hate disco music? Friends, it’s all these things and so much more (by so much more we mean a lot men in thongs and Miriam Margolyes being groped by a bland-ass Canadian singer in the tightest pants the costume department was able to manifest). We’re also pretty drunk on our themed sangria, which seems fitting because watching this movie sober is potentially hazardous to your health.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | August 4, 2025 · 12:00 AM

123.5 – Something Like Summer Movies

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 this season’s big blockbuster-y movies (and one smaller, more intimate one). From superheroes to dinosaurs to Chuck, the summer of 2025 has had it all! We also talk briefly about the upcoming conclusion to our Summer of Unhinged Musicals and the cocktail that we’ll be drinking to accompany it (hint: we’ve got a lot of apple themes going on).

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | July 21, 2025 · 12:00 AM

123 – Something Like Summer

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 was for some improbable reason turned into an absurdly long movie musical. Blurbs really can’t do this one justice, but suffice to say there’s a lot of gay angst, a lot of questionable creative choices, and a lot of mind-numbingly bizarre plot points. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they team up yet again with past guest Faith to just tackle this mess beat-by-beat. And yes, we’re all a little surprised that this is our longest episode ever too, but there’s just an unending river of insanity to cover here. Naturally, such a movie necessitates both a cocktail AND baked goods, so we really are covering all our bases here.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | July 7, 2025 · 12:00 AM

122.5 – Jukebox Musical Jumble

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 a while back where he posits a musical title and description and Leigh and Chris have to determine whether said musical is real or fake, but THIS time it’s exclusively jukebox musicals, the bane of the serious theater aficionado! Do you know enough about jukebox musicals to know if there’s one based on Enya songs? Or one based on the non-McCartney songs written by John Lennon? Heck, maybe some of these fake ones are actually seemingly more produceable than some of the real nonsense! Fittingly we also introduce next episode’s drink and unhinged movie musical topic (and boy is it a particularly bizarre one).

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | June 23, 2025 · 12:00 AM

122 – The Singing Detective

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, it’s 2003’s The Singing Detective, a not-very-acclaimed movie adaptation of a very-acclaimed British series. Please know that despite the name, there’s no actual singing, just a lot of lip synching to recordings of 1950s pop standards, which is… a choice that might not fully have a reason behind it here! Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the many odd decisions this movie makes, the questionable directorial choices (why, Keith Gordon, why???), and why Robert Downey Jr. might have seemed like a good option for the lead but kind of doesn’t really work. Also accompanying the main feature is a cocktail as bitter and tobacco-tinged as Dan Dark himself.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | June 9, 2025 · 12:00 AM

121.5 – Round Robin Recs

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 of those times. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan (partly), and Chris talk about some of these things, ranging from video games to movie adaptations of classic lit to attempts to extend the Sex and the City franchise long after its natural death. And with summer upon us, we also kick off a new summer miniseries featuring genuinely unhinged movie musicals. It’s going to be all-singing, all-dancing, long-suffering!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | May 26, 2025 · 12:00 AM

121 – It Could Happen to You

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 ticket with you,” then sadly the answer is no, it’s probably pretty unlikely to happen to you. Listen in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we take in Andrew Bergman’s not-unpleasant 1994 movie It Could Happen to You, starring Nicolas Cage, Bridget Fonda, and fully keyed in operating-at-fever-pitch Rosie Perez. It’s mostly a charming and frivolous little bit of cinema, so why did we feel the need to cover it? Could it be because of the weird “saintly man married to inhuman nagging shrewish wife” plot? The half-hearted attempts at magic realism or fairy tale vibes? The squandering of Stanley Tucci and Ann Dowd? In a word, yes. There’s some stuff to kick around here! There’s also a smoky iced coffee cocktail designed to be a tasty version of a glass of Folgers with cigarette ash in it, so if that doesn’t grab you then we don’t know what will.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | May 12, 2025 · 12:00 AM

120.5 – Culinary Crossover Conundrums

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 fall apart from there but hey it’s hard coming up with mini topics so pipe down maybe! We do another one of our li’l games where Brendan reads from a list of movie promotional menu items from famous chain restaurants, and Leigh and Chris have to guess which culinary abominations are real and which are (to date) not. Will Denny’s and IHOP ever be jailed for their crimes against humanity? Only one way to find out!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,

by | April 28, 2025 · 12:00 AM

120 – Addicted to Love

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 its own identity despite the admirable efforts of its cast. In other words, you’d get Griffin Dunne’s 1997 directorial debut, Addicted to Love, starring Meg Ryan, Matthew Broderick, and some poor dopes who were unlucky enough to have dumped them. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris devote a chunk of time to what went wrong with the execution of this shaky premise, covering issues ranging from “why does this actively feel like a black comedy that can’t commit to its own tone” to “does Kelly Preston even have a character to portray.” We’ve also got a great spring cocktail with some strawberries tossed in, so watch out, Anton!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | April 14, 2025 · 12:00 AM

119.5 – TV Repairfolks

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 a TV series instead. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris all choose a TV series they find interesting but poorly executed and discuss how it could have been fixed. We run the gamut from science fiction reboot to musical dramedy to Not Applicable (because someone did a video game instead). We also briefly comment on the movie we’ll be talking about next and the spring drink that accompanies it (in a desperate attempt to manifest spring weather).

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | March 31, 2025 · 12:00 AM

119 – The Box

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 comprehend it, while the box that is your body eventually gets so confused and frustrated by questions like “what’s with the water coffins?” and “why does every human act like a complete weirdo?”… then has to have a hard drink just to feel something again. Whereupon it is placed in the ultimate box (compartmentalization lest you shatter your brain box trying to make sense of all this), to slowly sober up.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as ,

by | March 17, 2025 · 12:00 AM

118.5 – TV Sides

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 bit to do or pop up with some quippy zingers. Look, we could all use more of this television archetype in our daily lives, so sit in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we shout out some of the bests. Also, start thinking about boxes because boy you’re going to have boxes on the brain (in fact, your brain is a box!) for our next movie discussion.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Why Watch?

Tagged as , ,