Retaining our previous form as WHH, we venture into "The Valley of the Gods" by Lech Majewski, respected Polish director and video artist the boys have absolutely no priors with. And so, as if from the void, comes this strange art film that Pat and Jake found pleasantly surprising, Matt not so much. Josh plays John Ecas, a frustrated copywriter and would-be novelist freshly cuckolded by his wife's hang gliding instructor and in the midst of an existential meltdown. What we get from this is a *gr...
Sep 23, 2020•1 hr 49 min•Season 1Ep. 39
We're doing another cheeky switch-em-up and putting on our other hat as We Heart Hartnett to cover Josh's latest: Most Wanted (2020), a journalism thriller with twin timelines, based on a true story (with some dramatization ;-)) directed by Daniel Roby. An extremis Quebecois junkie named Daniel Leger (Antoine Olivier Pilon) gets embroiled in a power play between small-time crook Glen Picker (Jim Gaffigan) and some crooked cops at the RCMP looking for an easy drug bust to justify their budget. Th...
Sep 16, 2020•2 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 38
And now…a time travel episode. In October 2019, Kendra James joined the boys to discuss a film starring Keanu and Sandra Bullock and a time traveling mailbox. The episode was scheduled to drop in April 2020, and so a lot of time was spent trying to predict what would be happening in the future. Some predictions were correct! Most were totally wrong! It’s a loopy episode and boy oh boy it is weird to listen to it now! Time travel!
Sep 08, 2020•2 hr 31 min•Season 2Ep. 34
The boys are back and discussing Keanu's latest, "Bill and Ted Face The Music." Look, we're a little rusty and it maybe took us a bit to get to the film, but we DO get there. Jake and Matt annoy Patrick their opinions and...should nicecore even be a description of something? Either way, all agree this was a nice movie and the bonhomie of Bill and Ted lives on, even in their progeny.
Sep 02, 2020•2 hr 25 min•Season 2Ep. 33
Ok folks, we've reached it. The big one. The crucial juncture. The Matrix (1999)! What to really say about this film? We live in a simulation created by machines in order to keep us blind to our captivity and usefulness merely as an energy supply for said machines. As a metaphor, consistently apropos. And if you haven't seen this film and are listening to this podcast you are a statistical outlier. Mostly the brothers Torpey give Patrick the space he needs to wax poetic about one of the biggest ...
Apr 07, 2020•2 hr 48 min•Season 2Ep. 32
Big episode, big movie, big acting! Scott Thomas returns to join us for "The Devil's Advocate" (1997). Keanu plays hotshot Florida criminal defense attorney Kevin Lomax, who ain't never lost a case. His bona fides (as well as a preternatural ability to choose a jury) get him an offer at a prestigious firm in NYC. There, Kevin and his young wife (Charlize Theron) are given a lavish parkside Manhattan apartment and go up a great many tax brackets. But could this have been....a deal with the DEVIL?...
Mar 31, 2020•2 hr 47 min•Season 2Ep. 31
"The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (1997) by Stephen Kay. This one's about Neal Cassady (played by Thomas Jane), muse of the beat writers, amphetamine popping driver of The Merry Pranksters, during maybe the most boring part of his life, rendered duller still by being treated so reverently. A young Neal is listless and dissatisfied in small-town Colorado, working at a tire factory and trying to suss out life's mysteries. These mainly consist of what type of girl is better to have sex with: The ...
Mar 24, 2020•1 hr 44 min•Season 2Ep. 30
Coming to you from an undisclosed bunker, bug out bags stocked, armed and ready. The show must go on! Content dispatch episode 29 "Feeling Minnesota" (1996) by director Steve Baigelman. It certainly feels like the product of a young mind; all the preoccupation with sex and criminality is there, violence as punctuation mark. What this film DOES have is a stacked cast who --most of them--manage to squeeze some drama and pathos from this script. Freddie (Cameron Diaz) is being forced by crime boss ...
Mar 17, 2020•1 hr 51 min•Season 2Ep. 29
We break our deafening silence with "Chain Reaction" (1996) by Andrew Davis. Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu) is an idealistic young scientist who finds a source of unlimited hydrogen energy by playing music to water or something. Unfortunately Eddie and his team are secretly funded by the deep state and it's chosen representative, the coldly pragmatic Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman), who wants this revolutionary tech for himself and those he works for. What ensues is a real meat-and-potatoes chase thrill...
Mar 10, 2020•1 hr 49 min•Season 2Ep. 28
It's Josh round 2 with Inherit The Viper , notable for being the first movie of his we've seen in the theaters since the naughty aughties. Our boy plays Kip Conley, one of 3 remaining members of the Conley clan, with some reservations about inheriting his criminal father's "business" as a local dealer in painkillers to a ravaged post-industrial town. It's a competent little thriller about the opioid crisis with a sometimes hack script and an unclear point of view. Doubt this will take down Purdu...
Jan 14, 2020•2 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 37
It's the triumphant return of WE HEART HARTNETT! It's also a return to Josh's late-career output with the very boring She's Missing, written and directed by Alexandra Mcguiness. A young woman named Heidi goes searching for her friend Jane, who appears to have become embroiled in a peyote cult led by Josh. This sounds cool and is not. We think it's, like, a commentary of some sort? Listen and decide for yourself!
Jan 07, 2020•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Merry Christmas! This week we’re jumping back to the beginning of Keanu’s career to discuss the made-for-TV film Babes in Toyland, in which our dude co-stars with a young Drew Barrymore. Together they sing songs about the great city of Cincinnati, travel to a magical land of toys, and get framed for the crime of grand cookie larceny. It’s a short episode because time is tight around the holidays, but the boys are drinking Corona Light so you know it’s a good time!
Dec 24, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Season 2Ep. 28
This week: now that Keanu is a full-fledged leading man, it’s time to star in a sweeping, romantic period piece. He teams up with Alfonso Arau, hot off the success of Like Water for Chocolate, to make A Walk in the Clouds, in which our dude plays the nicest soldier in the world, who returns from World War II and finds new meaning in life by hanging out with a Mexican family who owns a vineyard. All this plus classic stories about Jake and Matt’s dad!
Dec 17, 2019•1 hr 47 min•Season 2Ep. 27
William Gibson, largely considered the first cyberpunk author you read as a teenager according to an objective study, adapts his own short story with 1995's JOHNNY MNEMONIC, directed by Robert Longo! Our dude plays the titular Johnny, a data courier in a corporate dystopia where we are at once inundated with data to the point of illness, and denied anything not approved by aforementioned corporations. A real murderers row of stars here: Ice T, Henry Rollins, Dolph Lundgren and Takeshi Kitano. Jo...
Dec 10, 2019•2 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Reeves, Hopper, Bullock, Daniels, Morton, Jan de Bont at the mf helm, winner of 1995's Academy Award for best sound editing/mixing: it's SPEED (1994)! This is a big one for our boy, setting him up as a bona fide action star as LAPD SWAT member Jack Traven (more like Jacked Traven right?!). Hopper plays Howard Payne, disgruntled ex bomb squad who honestly just wants his damn pension, even if it entails elaborate extortion games with explosive-rigged speedometers. Hapless commuter Annie (Sandra Bu...
Dec 03, 2019•2 hr 39 min•Season 2Ep. 25
This week it's Little Buddha (1993), by Bernardo Bertolucci. Every now and then you run into these films by critically lauded directors tackling some large philosophical/theological/metaphysical theme and it just ends up....hollow. That's this! And it's for kids supposedly. Tibetan monks go to Seattle in search of the reincarnation of their old Buddhist teacher lama Dorje, seeing him in the person of Jesse Konrad, a little blond bowlcutted(?) boy. His parents are passive nothings. Eventually Jes...
Nov 26, 2019•2 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Hey now! Keanu's second collab with the talented Mr. Gus Van Sant; This time we have the mystifying and often incoherent Tom Robbins adaptation of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues", a surreal tale of one Sissy Hankshaw (played by Uma Thurman), a huge rubber-thumbed hitchhiking savant who feels it's her destiny to forever remain a nomadic free-wheeling spirit; that is, until she get's embroiled in a strange political battle at the Rubber Rose Ranch, an escalating plotline involving liberational Cowgi...
Nov 19, 2019•1 hr 51 min•Season 2Ep. 23
We have a very special objet d'art here with 1993's "Freaked." Directed by none other than Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) himself, who also stars and helped write the film! Winter plays celebrity simpleton Ricky Coogin who is hired by the Everything Except Shoes corporation to put a pretty face on a bad PR problem: claims they're fertilizer Zygrot 24 is wildly toxic. Hilarity ensues. This cult classic was basically strangled in it's crib for claims of being too weird. We've got Brooke Shield...
Nov 12, 2019•1 hr 48 min•Season 2Ep. 22
The Bard doth speak in the immoderate winds of galvanic plenitude most loquacious by familiar visages and....it's our episode on Much Ado About Nothing by Billy Shakes. We are joined for this pithy, digression-heavy episode by Rachel Schenk (@IAMRachelSchenk), who once played the role our very dude plays, Don John, the villain! We discuss Kenneth Branagh's career, do a southern-accented Joker character, and attempt to tackle this adaptation of heavy literary material which stretches the abilitie...
Nov 05, 2019•2 hr 52 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Hello boils and ghouls, we have a nice long (they're all long tbh) Halloween spooktacular for y'all: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)! We have a Halloween soundboard and everything! This needs very little introduction; it's the classic Dracula story with the major addition of a romance between the titular count (Gary Oldman) and Mina Harker (Winona Ryder), maybe involving reincarnation (?). As far as Keanu's legacy this is maybe most famous for saddling him forever with the popular idea that he's a ...
Oct 29, 2019•2 hr 35 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Who's ready for some Gus Van Sant and his laugh riot exploration of longing and search for human connection? It's My Own Private Idaho this week, a film about male street hustlers constructed from three separate creative endeavors (including an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV) into a surprisingly coherent and moving art house hit. River Pheonix plays Mike, the emotional focal point of the film, prostitute, former ward of the state and hapless narcoleptic. Mike is in love with Scott (our dud...
Oct 22, 2019•1 hr 54 min•Season 2Ep. 19
This week's episode is a beefy one: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991). Adam Lance Garcia (WIRED) joins us to discuss the second installment in the adventures of Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu) and Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter). We crush Twitter beef, veer all over the place and speculate on B&T's upcoming 2020 elaboration on their universe. This movie really blows open the door's further, having Bill and Ted journey through heaven and hell to secure the safety of their maiden babe wives an...
Oct 15, 2019•2 hr 29 min•Season 2Ep. 18
The prodigal son returns! Lost scion and Philly jawn Michael Curran joins us to discuss Point Break (1991), Kathryn Bigelow's action masterwork about two men obsessed with each other: Fresh-faced agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) and the sexily charismatic surf guru/bank robber, Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). We also have Utah's partner Angelo Pappas, played by an unhinged Gary Busey fresh from a serious motorcycle accident which hurt his brain! It's the best. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are in this becau...
Oct 08, 2019•2 hr 27 min•Season 2Ep. 17
This week's ep is about Tune In Tomorrow (1990). What to say here? It's an adaptation of the somewhat autobiographical novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa, but set in New Orleans in 1951. Keanu plays Martin, a young radio writer with an incestuous infatuation with his aunt, an older woman who isn't connected by blood, so it's, like, incest lite. And yes, this means he takes a stab at a Cajun accent and it leaves much to be desired. This movie is a bit of a mess, and even ...
Oct 01, 2019•1 hr 58 min•Season 2Ep. 16
This week's episode is I Love You to Death (1989). Inspired by a true story, philanderer and Italian stereotype Joey Boca (Kevin Kline) cannot keep the sausage in his pants, breaking the heart of his dedicated wife Rosalie (Tracy Ullman). Thus a murder plot is hatched, involving Rosalie, her mother, Devo (River Pheonix), and our dude, Keanu, as a heroin addict looking to raise some drug money. This one goes hard on Italians, indomitable creatures of sauce-based appetites. So be warned. Xoxox...
Sep 24, 2019•1 hr 50 min•Season 2Ep. 15
It's 1989 and we're talking Parenthood , the Ron Howard dramedy that arguably birthed Steve Martin's current reputation as suburban America's humorously exasperated white-haired dad. Gil (Martin) is just trying to be the best dad he can be, but his overwrought, neurotic son is throwing a wrench into the works of his fatherly self-image. Meanwhile, a satellite of other stories involving the members of his multigenerational family orbits Gil's own, tackling a surprising number of issues related to...
Sep 17, 2019•2 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Y'all were waiting for it: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). We're joined by special guest Griffin Newman ( The Tick ) as a proselytizer for all things Bill and Ted. Two San Dimas simpletons must time travel to avoid flunking their history exams or else be separated, thus destroying any chance for the future utopia they engender via their apparently transcendent music as rock group Wyld Stallions, an as yet a purely aspirational venture. But most of you dudes already knew that. Party on...
Sep 10, 2019•1 hr 47 min•Season 2Ep. 13
This week: we enter the lascivious intrigue-laden world of 18th century French aristocracy with Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Bored socialites John Malkovich and Glenn Close enact psychosexual revenge on various friends and family in an attempt to navigate the love and repulsion they feel for one another. Our dude Keanu plays an innocent fresh-faced music teacher and gets into a duel. Naturally everyone gets their comeuppance. Plus we read a negative iTunes review of the show which we definitely do...
Sep 03, 2019•1 hr 58 min•Season 2Ep. 12
This week, Keanu gets an extremely dumb haircut and decides to kidnap his coal-mining dad (Fred Ward) in 1988’s The Prince of Pennsylvania . Patrick, Jake, and Matt try to diagnose where this movie went wrong, while also covering important topics like Jake’s brief childhood modern dance career, the Torpeys’ recent trip to Croatia, and the Rugrats and Wild Thornberries movies.
Aug 27, 2019•1 hr 54 min•Season 2Ep. 11
This week, Patrick, Jake, and Matt do their best to keep the mood light while discussing 1988's Permanent Record , a movie that deals with the difficult subject of teen suicide. Keanu is Chris, the wacky best friend who gets thrust into the lead role when David (Alan Boyce) tragically takes his own life. This episode tries to make sense of a movie that veers from wacky comedy to searing drama while also answering questions like: why isn't podcast pornography a thing? What jobs did Matt work in 2...
Aug 20, 2019•1 hr 49 min•Season 2Ep. 10
