by | October 12, 2026 · 12:00 AM

139 – The Wolfman

AH-HOOOOO WEREWOLVES OF (and tangentially around) LONDON. As Halloween approaches, it’s time for Leigh, Brendan, and Chris to dust off a poorly-received horror movie for our annual Halloween Spooktacular, and continue our “90s updates of classic Universal monster movies” series while we’re at it. As such, there’s no better option to turn to than Joe Johnston’s 2010 flop The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, and the sensible delicate scenery-chewing of Anthony Hopkins. Audiences at the time stayed away from it like it was a silver bullet, but is there something here that actually works? Is it maybe actually almost kind of… GOOD??? Well… maybe! Listen and find out, won’t you, as we also enjoy a cocktail utilizing the classiest of all childhood beverages, Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider. Sophistication, thy name is Why Did We Watch This.

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by | September 28, 2026 · 12:00 AM

138.5 – Synopsis Scramble

It’s almost the spooky season, but because we’re not QUITE there yet, we’re gaming instead. One of our constant challenges is summarizing the plots of movies effectively when left to our own devices, so we though we’d see how accurately we could recap the movie we’ve covered when given a ticking clock. Are there any movies we don’t really remember? Can you summarize The Truth About Charlie by just filtering the plot of Charade through a French New Wave filter? Will Leigh want to talk about The Apple? What post-90s Universal Monster will we actually be discussing for Halloween? Listen up, won’t you, and find out!

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by | September 14, 2026 · 12:00 AM

138 – Romeo Must Die

Must Romeo die? Must he??? Well, ironically, no, according to 2000’s Romeo Must Die, which neatly sidesteps the whole tragedy issue by pointing fingers at actual villains, and then using an x-ray effect to see Jet Li breaking those fingers. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris’s mob family as we discuss both Jet Li and Aaliyah’s first major film and try to determine if the pair have actual chemistry, why we spend so much time dealing with an attempt to bring a new football team to the Bay Area, and how much of this movie actually maps onto the Romeo and Juliet story (spoiler alert, very little). But hey, there’s some fun action scenes at least! And there’s also some bitter orange cocktail to slurp down along with this early 2000s melange.

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by | August 31, 2026 · 12:00 AM

137.5 – bbnomini

Oops! We had an actual mini episode, but then due to technical issues, it was lost. So, uh, sorry. Try to imagine adaptations of games that we’d pitch, you’ll probably really enjoy it. So, instead, here’s the basic information you need about the full episode coming in two weeks. Hopefully that will go more smoothly!

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by | August 17, 2026 · 12:00 AM

137 – Battleship

Our Summer of Games draws to its inevitable conclusion with Peter Berg’s 2012 megaflop Battleship, a movie that somehow manages to be less engaging than just spending two hours watching someone set fire to $220 million. Hoist anchors with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the multitude of problems that thoroughly sunk this would-be blockbuster. Is it the (mostly) flat acting and unengaged cast? The choice to make aliens the enemy, in a futile attempt to make the whole thing a little more interesting? Peter Berg’s incessant naval-gazing [sic]? Or maybe none of this was the best way to just make a movie based on a board game where two people just say combinations of letters and numbers back and forth for twenty minutes. Maybe! Anyway, there’s all this and some slushy cocktails, too!

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by | August 3, 2026 · 12:00 AM

136.5 – Silent Hill

We wrap up our Summer of Games: The Good Ones series with 2006’s Silent Hill, an adaptation of parts of the classic video game franchise directed by that guy who did Brotherhood of the Wolf, Christophe Gans. Despite a fairly unfavorable critical response at the time, Silent Hill is in retrospect looked on as a pretty faithful adaptation of the material. Does that make it actually good, or is the bar just that low? Well, we’re… mostly receptive to what it’s doing, at least! Listen along as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss the source material, the adaptation itself, and what it manages to do successfully (or at least interestingly). Look, in comparison to our next movie, this one is a ding dang walk through the woods of Centralia (pre-unending coal fire). But at least we’ll have a slushy cocktail to make our final game adaptation (hopefully) go down a little easier.

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by | July 20, 2026 · 12:00 AM

136 – Dungeons & Dragons

Ah, the bad one! Our Summer of Games sinks to a new low with 2000’s Dungeons & Dragons, a cheap, misbegotten adaptation of the classic role-playing game- an intellectual property with nearly endless possibilities to draw from, and somehow we ended up with this. Journey along with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we try to make sense of what source material this is pulling from, why Thora Birch is so shockingly awful as a fantasy empress dishing vague platitudes about equality, and if Damodar’s ice blue 90s lipstick is supposed to be a fashion choice or an indication of naturally blue lips or what the hell is going on here. On the plus side… it was a good drink! Will this be a new nadir for our Summer of Games? Boy, we hope so!

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by | July 6, 2026 · 12:00 AM

135.5 – Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Ah, the good one! Continuing our Summer of Games where we devote a mini episode to a movie based on a game that actually worked out, we’re watching and discussing 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the rare game adaptation that’s actually pretty great! Join Leigh, Brendan, Chris, and Jarnathan as we talk about the many things this movie does right- casting, tone, direction, writing… it’s mostly all working really well! Why can’t they all be like this? Why didn’t more people see this? Why must we watch the much worse movie adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons next episode? Because we’re gluttons for punishment, that’s why. But hey, at least we enjoyed this movie!

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by | June 22, 2026 · 12:00 AM

135 – Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

As summer finally technically begins, our summer miniseries follow suit, and what better way to kick off our Summer of Games than with a video game adaptation? Enter 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a very very long and trite would-be magical epic starring a bunch of noted white people amidst some fairly rote sandy scenery. Leigh leads the discussion as someone who is very much a fan of the source material, with Chris lending his support, and Brendan in third place trying to figure out what came from the video game and what was just tossed in as an attempt to make this whole thing feel like a movie. Listen in as we discuss the origins of the story, the weird sidelining of any fun aspects of the video game, and the needlessly complicated evil plan the movie tries to keep effectively spinning. Also, there’s some FIFA-flavored potato chip chat and a suitably refreshing cocktail that’s easier to take than this movie.

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by | June 8, 2026 · 12:00 AM

134.5 – Werewolves Within

Summer has started, and with it one of customary themed mini-series! As the sun mercilessly beats down on humanity, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris retreat indoors to kick off our Summer of Games. That’s right, we’re going to be talking about three crappy movies based on games of various natures, but to combat that, we’re also trying to seek out some games adapted into movies that are (supposedly) good. With that in mind, our first discussion topic is 2021’s Werewolves Within, a cinematic adaptation of a video game that is a video game adaptation of a party game. Got it? Werewolves Within was received fairly favorably by critics and viewers upon its release, but is it actually good or is the bar just that low? Listen along, won’t you, as we try to direct just what exactly this movie is and how well it manages to function. Also, gird your loins as we reveal our first bad cinematic adaptation of a game to follow two weeks from now, and the drink that will mercifully keep us inebriated as we view it.

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by | May 25, 2026 · 12:00 AM

134 – Simply Irresistible

In the year of our Lord 2026, it feels like not only are we getting fewer romcoms, we’re getting far fewer insanely unhinged romcoms. Enter 1999’s Simply Irresistible, a real fever dream of a romantic comedy about a magic crab who awakens a woman’s dormant ancestral baking skills while helping her get some, except apparently it’s not really about any of those things apparently. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, Chris and returning special guest Faith pick apart this bizarre piece of 90s nonsense like so much goo-filled dessert fruit. Is it possible for two leads to have negative chemistry? Is constantly referencing better movies enough to sustain your crappy one? And seriously, what the hell is this movie supposed to actually be about? All this chatter and an equally misbegotten cocktail, too!

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by | May 11, 2026 · 12:00 AM

133.5 – Haven’t Seen It III: The Search for Suitable Movies

Hey look, this game we played twice before is back! That’s right, it’s Haven’t Seen It, where one (or more) of us tries to describe the plot of a movie we’ve never seen before based off just what we’ve gathered by context while someone who has seen said movie feels a smug sense of superiority for knowing how it actually goes. Unsurprisingly, it gets harder and harder to find viable movies for this, so we don’t get to do it all that often (or we end up accidentally repeating ourselves, as we did previously). But THIS time it’s different! THIS time, we made a list! And we limited ourselves to three movies per person. Er, wait, two. But we got to do a game we liked again, so we’re glad anyway. We also briefly discuss the upcoming romantic comedy we’ll be discussing two weeks from now, and it’s, uh, weird.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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).

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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.

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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?

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