Thanksgiving is a time when friends and family gather together to eat, watch football, and be grateful. And what podcast wouldn’t be grateful to have listeners who request films for us to watch and rate? Films like 2009’s ThanksKilling, a direct-to-video horror-comedy flick so absurd that no studio would touch it. And by no studio, we mean that literally: the filmmakers made it for $3,500 and sold copies of the DVD on Amazon directly to people desperate enough to buy a movie that promised “tits ...
Oct 22, 2019•46 min•Ep. 444
The second-highest grossing release of 1999, sitting at $672.8 million worldwide, was M. Night Shyamalan’s supernatural horror drama film The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment. The film spent five weeks at number one in the U.S. box office, was nominated for six Academy Awards, and introduced the phrase “I see dead people” into the pop culture lexicon. The film’s final twist, which became a Shyamalan trademark, kept audiences going back to see if they could spot the clues,...
Oct 16, 2019•52 min•Ep. 443
Based on the equally divisive novel by Bret Easton Ellis, the film American Psycho has been polarizing audiences since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival nearly two decades ago. Set in the late ‘80s, released in the year 2000, and now seen as a cult classic, the horror-comedy put Christian Bale on the map - and also spawned an ‘80s pop-infused musical. In the words of director Mary Harron, the film also reads “as a scenario of female terror,” as relevant today as when it was made. Likewi...
Oct 10, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 442
One of 1999’s breakout success stories was a found-footage horror movie, a student documentary, a Sundance darling, an elaborate hoax, a sleeper hit, one of the most successful independent films of all time, and a viral marketing experiment that resulted in the film’s three stars being listed as “missing, presumed dead” on the website IMDb for over a year. The Blair Witch Project, a long-gestating production from amateur filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, made on a shoestring budget o...
Oct 02, 2019•51 min•Ep. 441
Quentin Tarantino’s films seem to excite and divide audiences with equal fervor. His 2009 World War II masterpiece, Inglourious Basterds, was met with approval, but not universal acclaim. The film’s breakout star, Christoph Waltz, won an Academy Award for his role as SS colonel Hans Landa, but Basterds lost out in the Best Picture race to another war movie, The Hurt Locker. Dealing as it does with the theme of fighting fascism by any means necessary, Tarantino’s sixth film feels more timely now ...
Sep 25, 2019•52 min•Ep. 440
This week, we’re checking ourselves in for some therapy with Analyze This. Harold Ramis paired Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal for a gangland comedy that parodied films like The Godfather and A Bronx Tale and was co-written by esteemed playwright Kennth Lonergan. Before he fully embraced his comedic side with his role in Meet the Parents, DeNiro played to type with his role of an emotionally distraught mob boss Paul Viti, while Crystal played… well, himself, as a psychiatrist who gets caught up ...
Sep 18, 2019•45 min•Ep. 439
American director Robert Altman’s career spanned forty years, and included critical and commercial successes like M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, and Nashville. Altman’s films often featured large ensemble casts, improvisational dialogue, and social commentary - all of which are on full display in 2001’s Gosford Park. Based on an idea of an Agatha Christie-style whodunit set at an English manor house that Altman developed with Bob Balaban, Gosford Park’s script was written by ...
Sep 11, 2019•57 min•Ep. 438
This week Legends Podcast goes back to school with Election, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. Directed by Alexander Payne and produced by MTV Films, Election is a biting satire of high school politics that also presages the recount drama of the 2000 Election. Joining us this week as substitute teacher is Ian, author of the film blog Primal Scenes, which is a good thing because we’re still not clear on the difference between ethics and morals. Anyone? Anyone? Spoiler Alert! Spoil...
Sep 04, 2019•56 min•Ep. 437
Legends Podcast is cracking open the cinematic vault and bringing you a whole month of cons, capers, and car chases! Whether you’re an East End card sharp, a handsome art thief, a trio of rogue soldiers, or eight feisty heisting heroines, you’ll find the big score right here on our podcast. This is Aug-Heist! This week we’re talking about Ocean’s 8, last summer’s hit heist movie that also happened to be a female-led spin-off of the Stephen Soderbergh franchise. Following Debbie Ocean - played by...
Aug 28, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 436
Legends Podcast is cracking open the cinematic vault and bringing you a whole month of cons, capers, and car chases! Whether you’re an East End card sharp, a handsome art thief, a trio of rogue soldiers, or eight feisty heisting heroines, you’ll find the big score right here on our podcast. This is Aug-Heist! This week we’re talking about Three Kings, also one of our Legends of ‘99, starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze as a group of soldiers who attempt to steal Sadd...
Aug 21, 2019•59 min•Ep. 435
Legends Podcast is cracking open the cinematic vault and bringing you a whole month of cons, capers, and car chases! Whether you’re an East End card sharp, a handsome art thief, a trio of rogue soldiers, or eight feisty heisting heroines, you’ll find the big score right here on our podcast. This is Aug-Heist! This week we’re talking about The Thomas Crown Affair, also one of our Legends of ‘99, a remake of the 1968 Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway caper. Action director John McTeirnan pairs Pierce Bro...
Aug 14, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 434
Legends Podcast is cracking open the cinematic vault and bringing you a whole month of cons, capers, and car chases! Whether you’re an East End card sharp, a handsome art thief, a trio of rogue soldiers, or eight feisty heisting heroines, you’ll find the big score right here on our podcast. This is Aug-Heist! This week we’re talking about Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, also one of our Legends of ‘99, the movie that launched the acting careers of Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones, began the di...
Aug 07, 2019•51 min
Twenty-five years ago, Hollywood churned out another remake of “The Most Dangerous Game,” the classic tale of man-meets-man, man-hunts-man, hunter-becomes-the-hunted… you know, that old chestnut. Coming just a year after Jean-Claude Van Damme played a certain Hard Target, Surviving the Game combined the same basic plot with a fish-out-of-water story as a character actor from the city (Ice-T) is brought to the wilderness to run for his life from a group of other character actors (the late Rutger ...
Jul 31, 2019•54 min•Ep. 432
It’s Comic Con weekend and our spidey-senses are tingling with news and trailers from San Diego! But first we’re tackling the third second Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Far From Home! Picking up where Avengers: Endgame left our broken hearts, the latest spidey-flick starring Tom Holland sees our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler on a Euro-trip, with a Mysterio-us new player on the scene. But does this movie provide a satisfying denouement to Phase Three as we bid arriverderci to the Infinity Sa...
Jul 25, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 431
A handful of years ago Netflix jacked their prices and started making TV shows and movies. It didn't take us long to realize that they are much better at making TV shows. Yet for some reason we keep going back to the well of Netflix movies. Most likely it's because they are free. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they're bad , mostly they’re just free. What will “I am mother” hold? Listen in and find out! Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert! These discussions will be spoiler filled and may explicit lan...
Jul 17, 2019•51 min•Ep. 430
Thirty years ago, Batman swept into movie theaters, ushering in the modern era of comic book movie-making. Directed by Tim Burton, starring Jack Nicholson as the Joker, Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale, and Michael Keaton as the man who launched fifty thousand letters protesting his casting as Bruce Wayne. Despite a troubled production which saw a writer’s strike, budget overruns, stolen film reels, and intense skepticism of the film’s tone and direction, Batman became the biggest movie of the year an...
Jul 10, 2019•50 min•Ep. 429
In honor of the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home, we’re opening the Legends Vault and serving up a retro episode from our storied past. Sit back and enjoy “Spider-Man 2002” with Beef, Sean O’Hara, the Operator and John D. in Legends Podcast #101 from June of 2012. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming next week with Batman 1989! Enjoy the parade, and bring me pictures of Spider-Man!
Jul 02, 2019•2 hr 6 min•Ep. 7219
We’re just past the summer solstice, and what better way to celebrate the longest day of the year than by watching The Rock climb the tallest building in the world? Another hit from the summer of 2018, Skyscraper featured Dwayne Johnson as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, set in a Towering Inferno-meets-Die Hard pyrotechnic spectacular. However, the film was less successful domestically than it was overseas, grossing only $68 million in North America while it stacked up $236 million i...
Jun 27, 2019•46 min•Ep. 428
The highest-grossing movie of 1999 was the summer release of the long-anticipated return of Star Wars to the big screen. After Star Wars experienced a resurgence in the ‘90s thanks to the comic books, the Special Edition re-release of the original trilogy, and the “everything-but-the-movie” multimedia experiment Shadows of the Empire, George Lucas capped the decade with Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the first installment of the nine-episode saga he originally planned. Taking place a...
Jun 20, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 427
The summer of 2018 saw a few breakout hits, but none more surprising than Jon M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians, which earned $238 million worldwide and came in at Number Seven at the domestic office between May and Labor Day. Based on the novel by Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians boasted the first time a film featured a majority-Asian cast in a modern setting since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. And along with fellow 2018 megahit Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians proved that American audiences are craving dive...
Jun 12, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 426
Man, it’s a hot one… like the Sahara in the midday sun. The summer movie season is upon us, what better time to revisit some classics from the Summer of ‘99? First up is the unexpected hit The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, which revived a long-buried horror franchise. The Mummy also paid homage to Hollywood adventure films like Raiders of the Lost Ark… which was paying homage to other Hollywood adventure films, proving that there’s nothing that can’t be dug up and brought back...
Jun 05, 2019•49 min•Ep. 425
Ten years ago, director J.J. Abrams brought Star Trek back to the big screen in grand fashion, with a young cast and a surprising link to the original series. 2009’s Star Trek proved to be a summer blockbuster and the highest-grossing Trek film to date. It also proved to be Abram’s audition reel for a gig directing Star Wars - which he always professed was his first love. But a decade later, as J.J. wraps up his Star Wars run with The Rise of Skywalker, has the intervening time dimmed the shine ...
May 29, 2019•57 min•Ep. 424
Video game movies have a long history of disappointing fans. And perhaps no video game franchise has been more beloved - in a wider variety of formats - than Pokémon. From the original Game Boy game to collectible card games to the augmented reality game Pokémon Go, Pikachu and his ilk of “pocket monsters” have captivated fans and garnered zealous devotion. And though Pokémon has inspired many animated stories, it always seemed unlikely that there would ever be a live-action version. The 2016 sp...
May 24, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 423
There was an idea. To make a Russian knockoff of The Avengers! 2017’s Guardians was not a box office hit, but it represented an original attempt to recreate some of the success of American superhero films, typified by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for another nation’s audience. Using archetypes from the comic book genre, Guardians assembles a fantastic group of individuals with superhuman abilities, and pits them against a mad scientist bent on world domination. Sound familiar? In the end, does...
May 16, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 422
There was an idea. To make a movie franchise last for twenty-two movies over ten years, building an interconnected universe based on comic book heroes, and culminating in an epic two-film story. And then there was an idea, in first half of that culminating story, to kill off half of those heroes - along with the rest of the universe. Avengers: Endgame snapped into theaters last week with massive expectations and even bigger box office results. Currently sitting at number two, worldwide, of all t...
May 09, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 421
It’s April 20ish - 4/20 - and it’s our 420th podcast. What else are we going to do but talk about the highest calibre of film that American cinema has to offer: the stoner comedy? 2008’s Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay was the long-awaited sequel to the original burger-based road trip movie. Starring John Cho and Kal Penn as two Amsterdam-bound potheads, the film’s surreal storyline was underscored by political and social satire as the film took jabs at the War on Terror, racial st...
May 02, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 420
It’s April 20th - 4/20 - and we’re nearing our 420th podcast. What else are we going to do but talk about the highest calibre of film that American cinema has to offer: the stoner comedy? 2004’s Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was a sleeper hit on DVD, grossing almost twice on home video as it made at the box office. Starring John Cho and Kal Penn as two slider-craving potheads, the film’s surreal storyline was underscored by the two characters wrestling with life-changing decisions. But d...
Apr 24, 2019•59 min•Ep. 419
August. When film studios bring in the final harvest of the crop sown in May, before the weather turns cold and cineplexes reap the whirlwind of horror and holiday movies. The dog days of summer, before the bitter chill of awards season sets in. And the last hurrah of big-budget popcorn cinema, the most mindless of all movies. What better way to celebrate the end of summer than with a shark movie? Based on Steve Alten’s best-selling novel, The Meg spent two decades in development hell while the ...
Apr 18, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 418
Like 2017’s Get Out, last year’s breakout horror hit came from an actor-turned-first-time director best known for his comedic roles. John Krasinski - yes, Jim from The Office - directed and co-starred with his real-life wife Emily Blunt in a post-apocalyptic thriller set in a world where vicious monsters hurt and kill anything they… hear? A Quiet Place takes a very different approach to the traditionally scream-filled horror genre with a toned-down soundscape and only about 25 lines of spoken di...
Apr 11, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 417
Twenty years ago, American cinemas were rocked by one of the best overall years in movie history. Now, Legends Podcast is celebrating the Legends of ‘99 all year long. One of the most inventive films of 1999 came in the form of Warner Bros.’ kung fu/cyberpunk mash-up from two unknown directors, the Wachowskis. The Matrix, billed by producer Joel Silver as “the first movie of the 21st century,” was a box office phenomenon, debuting in first place, dropping to second, and then jumping back up to f...
Apr 04, 2019•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 416
