This week on Total Movie Recall, we go to the suck. Steve develops a thousand yard stare reserved for veterans of nightmare wars and mediocre podcasts. Ryan chalks up another point in the Irresponsible Father column, reflecting on his father’s prudent decision to let him watch this vision of insanity at a tender age yet again. If you listen to this episode, you can go to my house and fornicate with my sister. Full Metal Jacket (1987) d. Stanley Kubrick w. Gustav Hasford based on his novel The Sh...
May 04, 2021•1 hr 12 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we watch the first Manic Pixie Dream Girl ever on screen, who is not a girl at all, but is most decidedly a woman . It’s the perfect post-2020 movie, and not just because of the constant suicides. It’s twee and precious and we absolutely loved it. Harold & Maude (1971) d. Hal Ashby w. Colin Higgins Music by: Cat Steven (Yusuf Islam) Starring: Ruth Gordon Bud Cort Vivian Pickles Cult classic pairs Cort as a dead-pan disillusioned 20-year-old obsessed with suic...
Apr 27, 2021•1 hr 16 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we learn that while some stories never end, mothers do, and that’s the beginning of how a serial killer is made in this unflinching look inside the mind of one disturbed little boy. Hang in there with us, listen to this, and watch it again and try to tell us you didn’t witness a psychotic break as this poor boy retreats inside the dark fantasies of his mind. The Neverending Story (1984) d. Wolfgang Petersen w. Wolfgang Petersen , Herman Weigel Music by Giorgio Mo...
Apr 18, 2021•1 hr 45 min
Ah, the good ole days of passing around R rated spank tapes. This movie is so trashy, it gave Charlie Sheen HIV. Wild Things (1998) d. John McNaughton Starring: Kevin Bacon Neve Campbell Matt Dillon Denise Richards Daphne Rubin-Vega Bill Murray When teen debutante Kelly fails to attract the attention of her hunky guidance counselor, Sam, she cries rape, igniting a scandal that results in his arrest. Sam appeals to Ken, a hack personal-injury lawyer who has never handled a case that couldn't be h...
Mar 31, 2021•2 hr 3 min
Remember the innocent 90s, when white directors thought they had the N-word pass for some reason? What do you think their “woke” movie would look like? Probably like this, where the N-word is replaced by horrific rape and Mexican jokes. This proto-edgelord movie was looked at as such a good time romp that it was considered the perfect vehicle to transition from the hit network show ER to the big screen. What a simpler time… From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) d. Robert Rodriguez w. Robert Kurtzman (story...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 50 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we try to decide whether this is a charming, unique film about staying true to yourself, or a nightmarish descent into the insanity that comes with living in a barren, desolate landscape like rural Idaho, where the Uncle Ricos of the world keep subterranean dungeons for unsuspecting Debs. This might say more about where our heads are at right now than about this beloved comedy. Napoleon Dynamite (2004) d. Jared Hess w. Jared Hess , Jerusha Hess Starring: Jon Hede...
Mar 09, 2021•1 hr 47 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, these two born-insecure honkies break down the seminal Blaxploitation movie of 1975 and do a pathetic job of trying to reconcile its progressive vision of black empowerment with the misogyny of the pimp game. It gets complicated. Dolemite (1975) d. D'Urville Martin Story by: Rudy Ray Moore Starring: Rudy Ray Moore D'Urville Martin Lady Reed Jerry Jones Hy Pyke Dolemite is released from jail after being wrongfully convicted to take on rival pimp Willie Green, corr...
Mar 02, 2021•1 hr 56 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, things get Freudian as they did for every little boy who stared confusedly at Jessica Rabbit and wondered what was happening to them. Handsome, chiseled leading man Bob Hoskins soldiers on in spite of the bleeding ulcer all that booze gave him, and Christopher Lloyd goes to eleven with his unhinged, terrifying performance. Did hentai exist before this movie? Because it sure as hell did after it. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) d. Robert Zemeckis Starring: Bob Hosk...
Feb 21, 2021•2 hr 2 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we take a hard pivot from all the toxic masculinity of weeks past and Steve shows his gentle, romantic side. Somehow, Ryan makes this about his sad sack heartache but in the end, everybody calms down and moves on with a nice mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. The Princess Bride (1987) d. Rob Reiner w. William Goldman Starring: Cary Elwes Mandy Patinkin Robin Wright Chris Sarandon Christopher Guest Wallace Shawn André the Giant Fred Savage Peter Falk Bil l y Cr...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr 24 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Ryan stares out the window of his furniture-less modernist home at the endless, uncaring ocean while Steve sleeps on the floor with his hand gripped around his pistol. The pseudo-philosophy of this movie seems deeper than it is because it’s endlessly reflected in all the glass buildings of Michael Mann’s uber-masculine vision. Sure, it may be pretentious, but that’s the point, and if you’ve got a problem with that, I will take you down, because we ain’t exactly d...
Feb 07, 2021•1 hr 35 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, two white guys talk about hip hop culture in a totally convincing way when they put on their mustard-colored overalls to go to the House Party . Steve, a sentient walking issue of Pitchfork , schools Ryan on the infinite subgenres of hip hop while Ryan, to no one’s surprise, gets a little weepy at touching father-son relationships. House Party (1990) d. Reginald Hudlin Starring: Christopher Reid Robin Harris Christopher Martin Martin Lawrence Tisha Campbell-Marti...
Feb 01, 2021•1 hr 20 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, the pressures of competing at a professional level with all the concussions, cocaine, infidelities, and painkillers almost make Steve request to be traded during the free agency period after he and Ryan bicker about Oliver Stone’s divisive 1999 film, Any Given Sunday . Does Steve’s complete lack of interest in professional sports bring this episode to a screeching halt? Yes. Can you tell who’s writing these summaries yet? Probably. Any Given Sunday (1999) d. Oliv...
Jan 24, 2021•1 hr 46 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Steve and Ryan discover that there’s actually an antidote to getting punched really, really hard. The cultural divide proves too much for Ryan in this wild, fantastic, hallucinatory Kung Fu epic of many names. The story is incomprehensible, the fights are nonsensical, but Steve still finds it defensible, while Ryan finds the editing reprehensible. There’s no reason for this rhyme. Kung Fu Cult Master (1993) d. Jing Wong , Sammo Kam-Bo Hung Starring: Jet Li Man Ch...
Jan 18, 2021•1 hr 40 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, it’s Steve’s turn to not get it when Ryan forces him to snooze this way through the 1997 hambone, The Devil’s Advocate . This movie has it all -- a grand guignol of sex, violence, operatic depictions of Hell and Satan, Keanu swinging and missing, Pacino putting his blood pressure medication to the test -- and yet, somehow, it’s still boring! Please don’t waste Steve’s time with these faux-provocations. Show him something really controversial, like a basketball ga...
Jan 10, 2021•1 hr 40 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Ryan gets his hipster comedy credentials revoked after Steve makes him pay $3.99 to watch the 1994 not-so-classic comedy, Cabin Boy . Ryan simply cannot understand the cache this movie has in the “alt-comedy” world, or as he likes to call it, the “non-comedy” world (now that’s funny!). Steve would explain it, but you just, like, don’t get it man . Cabin Boy (1994) d. Adam Resnick Starring: Chris Elliott Ritch Brinkley James Gammon Brian Doyle-Murray Brion James M...
Jan 04, 2021•1 hr 42 min
This week on the Total Movie Recall Holiday Special, Steve and Ryan visit the mopey, gothy early 90s when Generation X looked to the high school Gloom King Tim Burton to express their so dark vision of Christmas. Stop motion animation is such a labor intensive craft that creates beautiful visions that aren’t all that interesting, which is going to enrage a bunch of high school Wiccans that love this movie. It does look great, though. Tim Burton 's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) d. Henry S...
Dec 29, 2020•1 hr 29 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, things get grim and a little too close to 2020 reality for comfort. Definitely don’t watch this movie if you’re fresh out of rehab, which Ryan can tell you all about. The future is bleak, but if it’s also as ruggedly handsome as Clive Owen is and has the greatest single-take of all time, it might not be so bad. This is also one of the greatest movies of all time, just to be clear about it. Children of Men (2006) d. Alfonso Cuarón Starring: Clive Owen Julianne Moo...
Dec 07, 2020•1 hr 50 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, our bodies go through some changes that we don’t know how to deal with as we take in a John Landis double feature with Thriller & An American Werewolf in London. We really just need somebody to talk to about it. What’s that, Dad? You’re busy? Okay, I’ll just go on the internet and learn some deeply ingrained, problematic attitudes about Michael Jackson, Nazi monsters and Van Morrison tantric sex cults. d. John Landis Special Effects: Rick Baker The Making of ...
Nov 29, 2020•1 hr 56 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Steve holds Ryan’s hair back while he cries and dry heaves and rocks back and forth like his cat just died, because there has never been a movie more perfectly designed to make him cry like The Sixth Sense. Misunderstood children? Check. Put-upon mothers just trying their best? Check. An exasperated but committed psychologist just trying to figure out how to reach this kid? Double check. Get your tissues for this one. The Sixth Sense (1999) d. M. Night Shyamalan ...
Nov 23, 2020•1 hr 46 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we acknowledge that The Wizard of Oz is, yes, a classic. However, it’s missing a certain je ne sais quoi , and we try to put our fingers on exactly what it needed. We conclude that classic, whimsical children’s film needed more childhood lobotomy, forced imprisonment, Queens pulling their own heads off, and Veruca Salt. Or Fairuza Balk? Potato potato. Return to Oz (1985) d. Walter Murch Based on books by L. Frank Baum Starring: Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Nicol Willi...
Nov 16, 2020•1 hr 35 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Steve and Ryan wonder why kids are scared of the stupidest boogeymen. The Leprechaun haunted Ryan for his entire childhood, waiting in dark corners, making it unable for him to pee in the middle of the night. If only he had watched the movie when he was seven years old, and seen how stupid, unscary, unwitty, and half-assed this boring, lazy movie is, he wouldn’t have wasted another second being scared. The Leprechaun can’t even be bothered to turn limericks into ...
Nov 09, 2020•1 hr 24 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Steve and Ryan put on their codpieces and fret over the innocence of teenage girls around David Bowie. Don’t get us wrong, we love this movie, but why does this charming children’s tale have a character named after the part of the anatomy responsible for transporting sperm? And why do so many sequences resemble sperm? And if all of these things are symbols for sperm, what does the Bog of Eternal Stench represent? We shudder to think… Labyrinth (1986) d. Jim Henso...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr 32 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, the age of innocence is over, and somehow what was supposed to be a fun episode about a trashy, campy, forgotten 90s horror movie becomes a despairing yawp into the empty air about the power structures that let abusive, predatory men get away with everything. Don’t worry, we still find time to talk about the golden age of Nickelodeon and this awful, awful movie. The Willies (1990) d. Brian Peck ( convicted child sex offender ) Starring Sean Astin Jas o n Horst Jo...
Oct 26, 2020•1 hr 29 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Steve and Ryan offend approximately 1/7th of the world’s population, which has historically gone very well. Ryan’s love of fairy tale settings don’t truck with Steve, who favors Disney’s gritty, street-level crime drama Aladdin . Ryan gets vulnerable about the deterioration of his mental health in this dumpster fire world we have, and Steve, ever a good man and a good friend, reaches out. We encourage you to reach out too. Because everything sucks right now, and ...
Oct 19, 2020•1 hr 26 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, one man’s fun trash is another man’s not-fun trash. Steve gets typically indignant at Ryan’s casual, cruel dismissal of somebody’s labor of love, and Ryan reaches heretofore unplumbed depths of his warped psyche, exploring the lingering effects of watching movies like Killer Klowns at too tender of an age. This is what happens when a little boy lets teenage girls bully him into watching movies. Ryan’s therapist has her work cut out for her this week. Killer Klown...
Oct 12, 2020•1 hr 44 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we take a big shit on Boomers and their cheap nostalgia for a “better time.” A time when a bunch of baseball-loving kids’ black friend would have had to walk home to his segregated neighborhood. A time of nuclear anxiety because our megalomaniacal leaders were determined to blow up the world. A time when women were openly sexually harassed with no consequences. But hey, wasn’t baseball fun? Don’t think about all that other stuff. The Sandlot (1993) d. David Micke...
Oct 05, 2020•1 hr 25 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, Ryan takes us on a journey through time and memory to show us his origins as a film-lover, a man, and, lo, a human. Sure, he could have said his favorite movie was some snooty, intellectual piece of New Hollywood cinema, but that would be a lie. It’s a VHS that his father got him as part of a $5.99 Big Mac giveaway at McDonald’s, and he was never the same. He makes himself vulnerable before you, and of course, Steve makes him regret it. Indiana Jones and the Last...
Sep 28, 2020•2 hr
This week on Total Movie Recall, we destroy our nasal septums with 1983’s Scarface . Ryan presents a cogent, detailed thesis on this film’s central character as a metaphor for the all-eating, never-satiating, soul-crushing machine that is capitalism, and Steve counters with “No he’s not.” Touché Steve… touché. Scarface (1983) d. Brian De Palma w. Oliver Stone Starring: Al Pacino Michelle Pfeiffer Steven Bauer Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio Robert Loggia Richard Belzer After getting a green card in ...
Sep 21, 2020•1 hr 49 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we watched the Sophie’s Choice of talking pig movies — Babe: Pig in the City. You might remember it as a sweet children’s fantasy movie about cute talking animals, but that’s just your brain trying to protect you from the harrowing nightmare that is this film. Dogs are hung from chains and drowned in front of us. Crippled Jack Russell Terriers are killed and teased with the sweet release from their worldly limitations, only to be cruelly pulled back into their wh...
Sep 14, 2020•1 hr 15 min
This week on Total Movie Recall, we find a new zest for life in 2001’s Amelie . Steve gets wistful recalling his time working in a porn shop, and Ryan reveals his ignorance about Paris. But is it ignorance? Don’t we kind of all know what Paris is really like? Smelly and smoky and rude? Not according to Amelie . Paris is a place of magical realism, true love, and tastefully decorated porn shops. Amelie (2001) d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet Starring: Audrey Tautou Mathieu Kassovitz Rufus Jamel Debbouze Isa...
Sep 07, 2020•1 hr 34 min
