This week on Alcohollywood, we take on one of David Fincher’s lesser-known films, the 1997 thriller The Game ! Uptight investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (a wonderful Michael Douglas) receives a 48th birthday present from his ne’er-do-well brother Conrad (Sean Penn) to participate in a service that turns his life into a thrilling ‘game.’ When the game starts to go too far, Nicholas is forced to fight for his life, while also trying to track down who’s behind these dangerous pranks. The film is...
Apr 25, 2013•1 hr 1 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we grab our zithers and wander back to post-WWII Vienna for Carol Reed’s noir classic The Third Man ! Starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, the film follows writer Holly Martins (Cotten) who works to unravel the mystery behind the assumed death of his friend Harry Lime (Welles), finding romance, mystery and intrigue along the way. The film’s cinematography is second to none, and Anton Karas’ inimitable zither score has become one of the most recognizable pieces of ...
Apr 18, 2013•54 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we crash and burn with guest Derek as we talk about 1990's cult hit Robot Jox , directed by Stuart Gordon! In the far flung future, the Cold War still rages, but now territorial disputes are settled by gladiatorial robot fights. Achilles (Gary Graham) our illiterate hero, squares off against Alexander (Paul Koslo) for the territory of Alaska. Luckily, he is helped by his genetically engineered love interest Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson) and the flamboyant Tex Conway (Mi...
Apr 11, 2013•1 hr 4 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Clint and Jared (along with our friend Mark of Our Fair City and Blastropodcast ) take on the Steven Spielberg classic Jurassic Park , just in time for its release in 3D this weekend! The tale of a group of paleontologists, scientists and children who visit an island based attraction inhabited by newly cloned dinosaurs has captured imaginations for generations, and it's hard to argue against how fun and awe-inspiring the film's visuals are. It's quintessential Spielbe...
Apr 05, 2013•1 hr 7 min
Saddle up, partners, because we (along with returning guest Todd) head to the Wild Wild West (of Italy) for the 1964 spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars ! Clint Eastwood plays The Man With No Name, a lone gunslinger with no allegiances and an eye for money, who wanders into a desert town besieged by gang warfare and decides to clean house. The film was a career-defining effort for both Eastwood and director Sergio Leone, who helped to define the spaghetti Western and its unique sense of drama...
Mar 28, 2013•1 hr 5 min
In this scattershot hero's journey, all manner of rented costumes are used to full effect as the Fantasy Mission Force encounters a group of Amazons led by a fey man in a tuxedo, Chinese Nazis driving American muscle cars, Asian Scotsmen, and many more strange horrors. Part of the charm (and the frustration) of the film is just how hyperactive it is, but if you can ride with the bizarre energy you can have a lot of fun laughing at it. While Jackie Chan isn't in it much, his fight scenes are as d...
Mar 22, 2013•46 min
Erin go bragh from Alcohollywood! To celebrate everyone's favorite drinking holiday, we invoke the luck of the Irish with the Hallmark TV special The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns , a three-hour epic slog starring Whoopi Goldberg and Randy Quaid! The movie follows a dumpy American visiting Ireland, falling in love, and interfering with the class warfare of magical Irish creatures. Along the way, we see a bevy of beloved Irish and Scottish actors shaming themselves, while terrible special eff...
Mar 15, 2013•1 hr 9 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we revisit the Coen brothers for the first time since our Big Lebowski episode, watching and drinking to the 2000 joyride O Brother, Where Art Thou? with our buddy Grant (of Chip and Ironicus and Let's Play Dungeons and Dragons )! A mythic melange of The Odyssey , Southern folklore, the Great Depression, and your standard road movie, the film follows a trio of escaped convicts (George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson) who embark on a journey across 1937 Mis...
Mar 07, 2013•1 hr 10 min
This week on Alcohollywood, our Disney princess Cherish joins us as we visit the Mary Poppins carbon-copy follow-up Bedknobs & Broomsticks ! Apprentice witch Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury) takes in three obnoxious Cockney children, only to promptly drag them along on her grand adventure to win the war for the British using the dark arts - which, apparently, just involves 'substitutiary locomotion' to get ordinary objects to float and perform pranks on people. The film, despite its good in...
Feb 28, 2013•55 min
The 2012 Oscars are upon us, and with that in mind we once again take on a Best Picture nominee! This time, it's Steven Spielberg's biopic Lincoln , starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the eponymous Emancipator. With a script by noted theatrical scribe Tony Kushner, the film depicts the ratification of the 13th Amendment in an almost procedural manner, with an excellent cast supporting a transcendent and sensitive performance by Day-Lewis. Despite its slow pace, and some occasional pacing and script is...
Feb 21, 2013•57 min
Happy Valentine's Day from all of us at Alcohollywood! In lieu of our regularly scheduled programming, our friends Julia and Todd join us to take on the 2009 Nia Vardalos vanity project I Hate Valentine's Day ! In this tragic misfire, the My Big Fat Greek Wedding star plays a patently psychotic florist whose strict five-date system blows up in her face in the wake of a fling with a charming, down-to-earth restauranteur (John Corbett, her co-star from Greek Wedding ). The humor falls flat, Vardal...
Feb 14, 2013•1 hr 7 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we take on one of our more obscure listener requests – the mid-90s micro-budget action movie Felony! The film features a bevy of B-movie stars (Jeffrey Combs, Lance Henriksen, David Warner, Joe Don Baker) who shamble through this film without really knowing what they are doing! The convoluted story follows a cameraman (Combs) and a bunch of vaguely linked groups of people, all looking after a tape that might incriminate the villains somehow. The movie takes place in a...
Feb 09, 2013•1 hr 1 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we're watching the 1997 disaster flick Dante's Peak , starring Pierce Brosnan and The Terminator 's Linda Hamilton as a rockstar volcanologist and a small-town mayor, respectively, who attempt to escape a rampaging volcano terrorizing the small town of Dante's Peak. Basically Jaws with a volcano, the film is a cheesy rollercoaster ride, but not nearly as obnoxious as its volcano-film partner, Volcano. The effects hold up well, the stakes are clear, and the filmmakers ...
Feb 01, 2013•1 hr 1 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we're getting weird with it! 1977's House (Hausu) is a wacky, sprightly, insane Japanese horror-comedy that follows seven teenage girls (all named after their chief personality trait) who visit an aunt's house for the weekend, only to be greeted with carniverous pianos, watermelon-based horrors, deadly mattresses, and spooky cats, all filmed with a colorful, cartoony edge by experimental film director Nobuhiko Obayashi. The result is incredible in its wackiness and ch...
Jan 24, 2013•59 min
One award loss and one sprained ankle later, Jared and Clint return from Vegas to resume their duties as your humble hosts! This time, friend of the show Craig stops by to help us dissect and make sense of one of his favorite films - the 1982 post-apocalyptic Italian anomaly She ! The film stars Conan the Barbarian 's Sandahl Bergman as a sexy warrior goddess helping two be-permed schlubs find a girl captured by the garishly dressed Norks. This film is a schizophrenic nightmare that will either ...
Jan 17, 2013•1 hr 8 min
Coming to you live from Las Vegas, Nevada, this episode of Alcohollywood sees Jared and Clint podcasting from the New Media Expo (recorded on Jan. 8th), joined by Editor-in-Chief of AMC Movie Talk John Campea, who graciously sits with us and gabs about Oscar nominations speculation (with which we make many wildly inaccurate guesses about what ended up being nominated). For the most part, however, we end up talking about James Bond's biggest Vegas vacation, Diamonds Are Forever ! The start of the...
Jan 11, 2013•50 min
Happy New Year, listeners! For 2013, we (along with Julia once again) are starting out the year with The 13th Warrior , the strange 1999 film starring Antonio Banderas as a Muslim who finds himself recruited to help stop a group of ‘demons,’ in true Beowulf style. Directed by both John McTiernan and author Michael Crichton, based on the latter’s novel Eaters of the Dead, the film is a muddled, dimly lit mess that is difficult to follow and unfortunately hard to look at. Despite some great practi...
Jan 03, 2013•1 hr 1 min
Merry Christmas and happy holidays from the folks at Alcohollywood! For the holiday season, we're tackling yet another unconventional Christmas film - the 1985 dystopian cult classic Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam! In this 1984-on-crack world of steampunk Britain, mild-mannered accountant Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) tries to track down the girl of his dreams while stymied by stunted bureaucracy, terrorist attacks and intrusive family and friends. The result is a wonderfully realized, dreamlike...
Dec 23, 2012•46 min
It's the end of the world, and we feel tipsy - this week on Alcohollywood, we watch the Roland Emmerich disaster flick 2012 and figure out just how worried we should be about the coming Mayan apocalypse (Hint: not at all). Follow John Cusack and a bloated ensemble cast of international actors, all slumming it for cash, as they alternately engage in philosophical hand-wringing about the end of the world and evade one CGI sequence after another. Despite some engaging disaster porn, it's still pret...
Dec 20, 2012•55 min
Harry Connickuh everybody! In celebration of that, we check in with Little Man Tate , the 1991 kid dramedy starring (and directed by) Jodie Foster. Foster plays Dede, a working class mom in New York who struggles to raise her little man, Fred Tate, a young genius, and the pressures of celebrity and achievement coming from the early-90s obsession with kid geniuses. Connick himself also stars (well, cameos) as a charismatic college student who teaches Fred the ways of pool and awkwardly walking in...
Dec 14, 2012•1 hr
This week on Alcohollywood, we check out the 1980s Danny Devito-directed comedy Throw Momma from the Train , starring DeVito as a schlubby mama's boy who, wishing the death of his mother (Anne Ramsey, The Goonies ) gets mixed up in a Strangers on a Train -like bargain with his struggling writing teacher (Billy Crystal) to kill his mom in exchange for her lamprey-like ex-wife. The result is a surprisingly hilarious and darkly comic buddy piece, with Crystal and Devito giving career-high performan...
Dec 06, 2012•52 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we praise Crom with our review and drinking game to 1982's Conan the Barbarian , the John Milius flick that put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map! This silent, episodic epic follows the eponymous barbarian (Schwarzenegger) on his quest for revenge against the warlord-turned-cult leader Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), joined by his friends Valeria (Sandahl Bergman) and Subatai (Mongolian Sonny Bono). With a huge and bombastic score from Basil Pouledoris, fantastic camer...
Nov 29, 2012•1 hr 4 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we're ushering in the new Spielberg film ( Lincoln ) with one of his last films named after the surname of one of the main characters - Hook ! This 1991 nostalgia misfire, starring Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman, explores what happens if Peter Pan wakes up and becomes a cynical workaholic lawyer who ignores his kids, complete with floppy '90s cellphone. When the nasty Captain Hook (Hoffman) kidnaps his kids to bait Peter to come back, Tinkerball (a distracted Julia...
Nov 23, 2012•1 hr 3 min
The name’s Bond….James Bond! This week, Alcohollywood is doing its first New Release with the latest James Bond film Skyfall , in which James Bond (Daniel Craig) deals with the specter (get it?) of his childhood and his empty life as a spy, all while melding the gritty Bourne-era Craig Bonds with more traditional elements. Here, an attack on M (Judi Dench) brings Bond back out of the shadows, in order to track down her potential killer and a list of undercover spies that is threatened to be rele...
Nov 15, 2012•1 hr 6 min
Remember Dorf? Those 1980s VHS tapes with Tim Conway where he plays a dwarf golf instructor by standing in a hole in the ground, with tennis shoes glued where his knees are to simulate having shorter legs? This week on Alcohollywood, we’re finally tackling one of those hit “cult bad movies” you kids these days seem to like so much – Tiptoes ! This time around, we get to see the “Dorf effect” be given to acclaimed actor Gary Oldman, in what the schizophrenic trailer claims is “the role of a lifet...
Nov 08, 2012•59 min
Welcome to the second episode of Alcoholloween, as we finish up HORROR OCTORBOR!, our month of Stephen King films, with the 1982 horror anthology Creepshow ! Here, dated and wacky cartoon transitions from George A. Romero ( Night of the Living Dead ) speed us along five tales of terror. Prepare for two hours of: a vengeful father who just wants his cake; a dumb yokel (a blissfully rare acting role from King himself) finding a meteor with strange properties; a vengeful husband takes his sadistic ...
Oct 30, 2012•1 hr 4 min
This week on Alcohollywood , we check in to the Overlook Hotel with 1980s Stanley Kubrick film The Shining , as we continue HORROR OCTORBOR! Watch the slow but intense haunting of the Torrances, who care for the hotel by themselves, with the help of fantastic cinematography, chilling performances and a haunting sense of atmosphere that makes thus truly one of the best Stephen King adaptations to date (even if King himself doesn't think so). Along with this, we can descend into alcoholism right w...
Oct 26, 2012•49 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we're headed back to the 1980s with the Stephen King-written werewolf flick Silver Bullet , starring Gary Busey as alcoholic-yet-fun uncle Red, who helps handicapped Corey Haim track down a werewolf that's killing the increasingly-simpleminded denizens of his small Maine town. Luckily, they've got the help of their spunky sister, a bunch of unfounded assumptions, and Corey's flipping-sweet motorized wheelchair, the "Silver Bullet"! Keep a look out for other actors who...
Oct 18, 2012•56 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we’re continuing HORROR OCTORBOR! by sitting through the three-hour miniseries IT, starring a bevy of B-level actors at the height of their popularity in the early nineties, plus a “special appearance” by Tim Curry as the titular character! Let’s get the Stephen King checklist out: After a group of seven kids (check) in a small town in Maine (check) destroy a creature that preys on their everyday fears (check), the kids – one of whom is a famous horror author (check) ...
Oct 11, 2012•59 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we start HORROR OCTORBOR!, where we celebrate Halloween by reviewing and drinking to Stephen King adaptations! To begin, we tackle the 2007 thriller 1408 , starring John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson and one evil fucking room. In typical Stephen King fashion, the main character is a cynical horror writer (Cusack) with family issues who investigates a notoriously scary hotel room in New York – you can guess what happens next. The movie is, if nothing else, great for fridge...
Oct 04, 2012•51 min
