Happy holidays, listeners! Every year, we take on an unconventional Christmas movie around the Yuletide season, and this time we (along with returning guest Mark Soloff of Blastropodcast ) dip back to investigate Tim Burton 's deeply strange, fascinatingly weird superhero flick Batman Returns ! After Burton's first Batman revitalized the superhero movie as a pop culture phenomenon, he decided to get real strange with it in Batman Returns . Ostensibly, the film features a pitched battle between t...
Dec 22, 2018•1 hr 40 min
Every year, the Alcohollywood podcast takes the week before Christmas to celebrate the life and works of Sir Harry Connick Jr. - actor, musician, Renaissance Man . Harry Connickuh, listeners! For this episode, we take our appreciation for Harry Connick Jr. all the way to the beginning - his breakout film debut in the 1990 WWII drama Memphis Belle . Connick joins a cavalcade of other young 90s stars ( Matthew Modine , Sean Astin , Tate Donovan , Eric Stoltz , Billy Zane and more) as the crew of a...
Dec 14, 2018•1 hr 5 min
We only had time for one episode last month, so we're double-dipping this week by extending 00-vember into 00-cember! We move from Timothy Dalton to Pierce Brosnan with the 1997 007 flick Tomorrow Never Dies ! Sure, Goldeneye revitalized the Bond franchise, introduced a stellar new Bond in Pierce Brosnan, and updated the secret agent to reflect more on his "sexist, misogynist dinosaur" nature. But then Austin Powers came out and made a bunch of money, so 007 had to get goofy again with his next ...
Dec 07, 2018•1 hr 29 min
As a busy Thanksgiving month winds down, we realized that we haven't talked about a James Bond film for literally 200 episodes . To that end, we decided to get in a little 00-vember action with the severely underappreciated James Bond film The Living Daylights ! The first of Timothy Dalton 's two films as 007 (a criminally short tenure), The Living Daylights is one of the most thrilling Bond pictures no one talks about. Sure, the story is a bit muddy and convoluted - a disorienting spy caper inv...
Nov 30, 2018•1 hr 22 min
As we continue to wrap up our coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival , it's important to take a look at some of the smaller stuff that came out of the fest, especially those set in the city the festival calls home. Gregory Dixon 's vibrant, energetic indie coming-of-age dramedy Olympia is a rather fun breath of fresh air - the tale of a conflicted thirtysomething (writer/star McKenzie Chinn ) struggling to make ends meet at a dead-end job, dealing with a dying mother in the hospital...
Nov 07, 2018•23 min
Howdy, listeners! Today we're saddling up and sucking back some moonshine to an old Western classic, 1969's True Grit! (NOTE: I have used my pun quota for this episode; the rest of this post is safe for consumption). Along with guest panelist Gavin, Jared and Clint tackle the impertinence of Mattie Ross, a little history of Oklahoma, and the nuances of a John Wayne performance, as they provide their signature drinking rules for this film.
Nov 02, 2018•40 min
Happy Alcohol-loween! We close out our Seven Deadly Sins edition of Horror Octorbor by going old-school for Wrath - the vengeance-filled slasher Friday the 13th ! Sure, this is the one that doesn't have Jason in it - see our Freddy vs. Jason episode for our thoughts on the hockey-mashed butcher - but Mrs. Voorhees ( Betsy Palmer ) still has some bloody fates in store for the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake. From Kevin Bacon 's horny teen to, well, the less-famous fodder around him, Sean S. Cunni...
Oct 31, 2018•1 hr 4 min
While dysfunctional family dramas are arguably a dime a dozen, Elizabeth Chomko's Chicago-centric debut What They Had stands out substantially from the pack. A touching, heartfelt tale of a woman ( Hilary Swank ) who returns home to help her brother ( Michael Shannon ) and father (Robert Forster) care for her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother ( Blythe Danner ), What They Had is refreshingly nuanced, filled with strong, witty dialogue and incredible performances from its lead cast. While at the Chicag...
Oct 30, 2018•29 min
The world of contemporary art is a wild, wild thing - millionaires bidding incredible amounts of money to collect works from modern artists based on reputation, potential future valuation, or even (on occasion) the actual aesthetic value of the piece. In his upcoming HBO documentary The Price of Everything, filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn ( My Architect ) takes an in-depth look at this strange mix of art and commerce, getting unfettered access to art collectors and the artists who themselves toe a prec...
Oct 29, 2018•28 min
Horror Octorbor keeps a-chuggin' along this month, as we continue to break down the seven deadly sins! This week, we take a look at Envy in the context of 1992's erotic psychological thriller Single White Female ! In the vein of other 90s domestic horror films like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Unlawful Entry , Single White Female explores the kind of dangers that could happen even in the safety of your home. Here, that's manifested in Hedy ( Jennifer Jason Leigh ), the mousy new roommate o...
Oct 24, 2018•1 hr
Beautiful Boy is the latest brick in Amazon Studios' foundation of establishing itself as the new Miramax - the home of middlebrow American indies featuring sad white people going about their lives. Sometimes they're great, like Jim Jarmusch's Paterson; other times, well, it's Woody Allen's latest thing or Life Itself . Beautiful Boy is closer to the Paterson end of the spectrum, a handsomely-made actors' showcase telling the real-life story of David (Steve Carell) and Nic Sheff (Timothée Chalam...
Oct 15, 2018•36 min
Horror Octorbor keeps on chugging, as we keep exploring the seven deadly sins with our entry for Lust, Species ! This 1995 sexy-alien chiller (courtesy of Dante's Peak and The November Man 's Roger Donaldson ) features Ghosts of Mars ' Natasha Henstridge as Sil, a sultry alien-human hybrid from outer space who escapes Ben Kingsley 's government facility to seek out a mate for her alien babies. In hot pursuit is a rag-tag team of scientists ( Marg Helgenberger , Alfred Molina ), an 'empath' ( For...
Oct 14, 2018•1 hr 1 min
Novelist, screenwriter and Pulitzer-nominated playwright Theresa Rebeck is a woman of many hats - the latest of which is the director of the independent ensemble comedy Trouble . A film with modest ambitions but no small amount of charm, its tale of a small-town sibling rivalry is bolstered by tremendous performances from a more-than-qualified cast ( Anjelica Huston , Bill Pullman , David Morse , Julia Stiles , Brian D'arcy James , the list goes on). For this special minisode of the podcast, Cli...
Oct 11, 2018•20 min
(CONTENT WARNING: use of the word 'gypsy' ) We explain the full context of its usage in the episode, and its ubiquity in the film itself makes it relatively unavoidable as a term. However, we understand its seriousness as a pejorative to the Romani people, and apologize in advance for anyone who might be offended.) Seven years in, and Alcohollywood is on its seventh Horror Octorbor! Some Kind of Goblin sets upon us a mission to explore films related to the seven deadly sins, so we're temporarily...
Oct 05, 2018•55 min
Hey, we're back! Clint's wedding and subsequent marriage has kept us busy, but now we're answering some mailbags (however indirectly) with the 2011 DreamWorks picture Puss in Boots ! The Shrek spinoff wisely dispenses with a lot of the obnoxious, dated pop culture references of its parent series, and focuses on the adorably blustering outlaw Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) as he embarks on a quest to steal some magic beans from Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris). Along the way, ...
Sep 28, 2018•1 hr 17 min
The Self-Transcendence Race in New York City is a grueling, unrelenting 3,100-mile race held every year around a single block in Queens - 60 miles a day, 52 days. There's no prize money, no corporate endorsements - each of the runners who travel from around the world to participate do it for the higher purpose of self-improvement and spiritual practice. The documentary 3100: Run and Become explores this race, contrasting it with other examples of world cultures using running as a spiritual pract...
Sep 20, 2018•24 min
For the latest On Tap minisode, we air an interview Clint conducted for the new John Cho computer-screen thriller SEARCHING - about a frantic father searching for his missing daughter by going through the clues on her laptop! Clint sits down with SEARCHING director Aneesh Chaganty and producer Sev Ohanian to talk about the origins of the project, the narrative possibilities of conveying narrative through technology, and the importance of telling stories from an Asian perspective.
Aug 30, 2018•22 min
This week, we make a triumphant return to the mailbag, taking a listener request to discuss Paolo Sorrentino 's ponderous arthouse quirk-fest This Must Be the Place ! Consequence of Sound film editor Dominick Suzanne-Mayer joins us in this exploration of one of Sean Penn 's stranger performances, as a washed-up Robert Smith-type rock star who returns to America to hunt the escaped Nazi who tortured his father during the Holocaust. Like a lot of Sorrentino joints (see also: The Great Beauty ), Th...
Aug 11, 2018•1 hr 5 min
Happy Shark Week everybody! It's the most fin-derful time of the year, and since The Meg is foolishly coming out two weeks after Shark Week, we're celebrating instead with one of the craziest Sci-Fi Original Movie-level shark flicks out there - Shark Attack 3: Megalodon ! Starring a pre-fame John Barrowman ( Doctor Who, Torchwood ), Megalodon sees a Playa del Rey beach resort beset by a giant, roving shark thought extinct - now revived with the power of blown-up stock footage. Along with a sexy ...
Jul 27, 2018•1 hr 10 min
Lifechanger is a sneakier, more fascinating thriller than it might seem at first glance - the tale of a man doomed to feed off and inhabit the bodies of those he encounters to survive. His psychology twisted up in the memories of those he impersonates, and his lingering obsession with an old flame (Lora Burke), the protagonist of Lifechanger turns the film into a fascinating reversal of genre conventions. For our latest On Tap mini-podcast, we sat down with Justin McConnell, the writer/director ...
Jul 20, 2018•20 min
The main podcast is back, baby! Since Ant-Man and the Wasp has us thinking about all things shrinking, we decided to look at 1987's fun-sized adventure comedy InnerSpace ! Film critic for HollywoodChicago.com (and now Alcohollywood!) Jon Espino joins us to dive into a movie from our 80s-kid childhoods - a Joe Dante romp of the finest order that sees hotshot pilot Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) shrunk down to a microscopic level and injected into the body of nebbish hypochondriac Jack Putter (Mart...
Jul 13, 2018•1 hr 8 min
(This review and interview originally ran as part of On Tap's previous run as its own separate feed. We're re-running it here in conjunction with All the Queen's Horses' release on Netflix.) This week for our On Tap minisode, Clint discusses the new indie doc from Kartemquin, All the Queen's Horses. Plus an in-studio interview with All the Queen's Horses director/producer Kelly Richmond Pope!...
Jul 09, 2018•22 min
Arthouse queer enfant terrible Bruce LaBruce has crafted an interesting career as an underground director of gory, sexy, splatter-ific screeds on radical topics like terrorism, feminism, and gay liberation. His latest, The Misandrists (read our review here ) is no exception; for this latest episode of On Tap, Theo Estes sits down with LaBruce to talk about the politics of his films, their bawdy B-movie inspirations, and the need for confrontational movies like these. (We also pepper in a few upd...
Jul 06, 2018•27 min
Alcohollywood's spinoff mini-cast On Tap returns! Every so often, we'll be providing you with exclusive interviews, reviews and festival coverage alongside the regular podcast. Hope you enjoy! To kick off our (semi-) inaugural installment, Clint reviews Leigh Whannell's upcoming sci-fi thriller Upgrade . After losing his wife and the use of his limbs after a tragic attack, a man (Logan Marshall-Green) equips himself with an experimental technological upgrade to regain the ability to walk - using...
May 29, 2018•17 min
For this episode, we crashed Hotel Moxy in downtown Chicago for their inaugural Moxy SoundOff Podcast Series, trapping ourselves in a little glass booth for the entertainment of our live audience. Since this live podcast took place in a hotel, and we've already done The Shining , we decided to tackle the second-greatest movie set in a hotel - Dunston Checks In ! This kiddie caper set in an art-deco Manhattan hotel stars Jason Alexander as your classic overworked '90s dad, who must suddenly conte...
May 25, 2018•1 hr 8 min
What does it take to change the essence of a man? This week, we find out (along with regular guest Derek Jarvis) as we dive into Steven Seagal's eco-friendly auteur explosion-fest, On Deadly Ground ! Seagal's sole director credit, On Deadly Ground features He of the Ponytail as oil-fire specialist/secret military badass Forrest Taft, a fixer for evil petroleum exec Michael Jennings (Michael Caine, doing his damndest to sound American) in the Alaskan oil fields. After he uncovers a conspiracy to ...
May 13, 2018•1 hr 7 min
Jared's been zapped into another dimension, so Jon Espino of The Young Folks and HollywoodChicago.com joins Clint to investigate the mysteries of Netflix's Super Bowl-marketed sci-fi disaster The Cloverfield Paradox ! A previously-unrelated sci-fi thriller given the J.J. Abrams treatment, The Cloverfield Paradox turns Julius Onah's The God Particle into a confusing, meandering installment of Paramount's favorite clearinghouse for original sci-fi movies! Here, the crew of the Cloverfield Station ...
Apr 29, 2018•55 min
Danger, Will Robinson! With Netflix's reboot of Lost in Space coming out today, we (along with Lauren Faits, co-host of She-Ra: Progressive of Power ) decided to talk about the first time the classic sci-fi show got revamped: the 1998 film Lost in Space ! Reverse-engineering the campy 60s TV show into a four-quadrant CG blockbuster, Lost in Space sees the Space Family Robinson (William Hurt, Mimi Rogers, Heather Graham, Lacey Chabert, Jack Johnson) hurtled into unknown space along with their Rob...
Apr 13, 2018•1 hr 11 min
Somebody once told us to watch the 2001 ensemble road comedy Rat Race - we ain't the sharpest tools in the shed, so we did it (along with our very own all-star, Theo Estes)! The latest in a long tradition of star-studded broad comedies featuring groups of A-list actors on a wacky cross-country race, like It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Cannonball Run, Rat Race follows a half dozen strangers (including Whoopi Goldberg, Seth Green, Jon Lovitz, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Rowan Atkinson) who are tappe...
Mar 30, 2018•1 hr 13 min
Erin go bragh, faithful listeners! This week, we celebrate St. Patrick's Day with our very own St. Patrick MacDonald of HollywoodChicago.com , as we down a pint and fight some beasties with the Irish horror comedy Grabbers ! When a sleepy Irish town is beset by extraterrestrial octopods with a thirst for blood, the town must rally around an alcoholic local cop (Richard Coyle) and his straight-laced partner (Ruth Bradley) to fight them off the only way they know how - by getting piss drunk! Much ...
Mar 17, 2018•58 min
