On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by Max Read — of the Max Read Substack — to talk Air Force One , the 1997 action thriller directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring none other than Harrison Ford as The President. Air Force One also stars Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Paul Guilfoyle, William H. Macy, Liesel Matthews and Dean Stockwell. In Air Force One , as I’m sure you know, the president’s aircraft is hijacked by a group of terro...
Feb 07, 2025•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Contact , the 1997 science-fiction drama directed by Robert Zemeckis. Based on the book by Carl Sagan, Contact stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway, a SETI scientist who discovers extraterrestrial life and is eventually chosen to make first contact with the alien life. Foster is joined by a stacked cast of character actors, including Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hunt, Rob L...
Jan 18, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Men in Black , the 1997 sci-fi action comedy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio and Rip Torn. Men in Black was written by Ed Soloman and shot by the late Donald Peterman — whose credits include Flashdance , Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Point Break — with a score by Danny Elfman. In Men in Black , Smi...
Dec 20, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast In The Saint , Kilmer plays Simon Templar, a professional thief known as “The Saint” for using Catholic saints as aliases. He steals a microchip from a Russian oil company but is caught by the owner’s son. He is then hired by the owner, a billionaire oligarch named Tretiak, to steal a cold fusion formula discovered by Emma Russell, an American chemist. Tretiak plans to use the formula to monopolize the Russian energy market. Once he obtains the formula, he also plans to kill Simon. Simon seduces...
Nov 10, 2024•2 hr 47 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the The Second Civil War , a 1997 satirical film directed by Joe Dante for HBO. Starring James Earl Jones, Elizabeth Peña, Denis Leary, Beau Bridges, Phil Hartman and James Coburn, The Second Civil War takes place in a future where rapid, unlimited immigration has produced a balkinized society of ethnic enclaves. California is essentially been re-absorbed into Mexico and Rhode Island is home to millions of Chinese migrants.&n...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1997 thriller The Devil’s Own , directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. In The Devil’s Own , Pitt plays Frankie McGuire, an IRA soldier who travels to the United States to obtain advanced weapons for the fight in Ireland. He is put up in the home of NYPD Sergeant Tom O’Meara, played by Ford, who does not know McGuire’s mission. The two develop an easy rapport and McGuire becomes a part of O’Meara’s ...
Sep 27, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week's episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Absolute Power , the 1997 conspiracy thriller directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by William Goldman and based off of a David Baldacci novel of the same name. In addition to Eastwood, Absolute Power stars Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert. In Absolute Power , Eastwood plays Luther Whitney, a master thief who makes the fateful decis...
Sep 14, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Shadow Conspiracy , the 1997 political thriller directed by George P. Cosmatos and starring Charlie Sheen, Linda Hamilton, Donald Sutherland and Sam Waterston. In Shadow Conspiracy , a young White House aide uncovers a plot to assassinate the president, making him a target of the conspirators. What follows is a race to evade the assassin, expose those responsible, and save constitutional government from a shadowy grou...
Aug 24, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched Tim Burton’s 1996 sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks! , starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short Pam Grier, Rod Steiger, Jim Brown, Lukas Haas, Danny DeVito and Natalie Portman. Mars Attacks! was based off of the 1960s-era trading card series by Topps. In the series, Earth is invaded by cruel, hideous Martians who hope to colonize the planet and enslave its popula...
Aug 09, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Independence Day , humanity makes its first contact with an alien race. What follows is one day of destruction, one of despair, and one day where the human race, led by the United States, fights back. Jamelle and John use the film to discuss the triumphalist American optimism of the 1990s as well as the political afterlife of the imagery of the film, which extends into the post-9/11 era. Some of the taglines for Independence Day were “We’ve always believed we weren’t alone. On July 4th, we’ll...
Jul 15, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Star Trek: First Contact , the eighth movie in the Star Trek film series and the first film in that series to focus solely on the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. First Contact stars Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner Marina Sartis, Michael Dorm, Alfrie Woodard, Alice Krige and James Cromwell. It was directed by Frakes with a score by Jerry Goldsmith. In First Contact ...
Jun 30, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Courage Under Fire , a 1996 war drama directed by Edward Zwick and starring Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, as well as Lou Diamond Phillips, Matt Damon, Michael Moriarty and Bronson Pinchot. In Courage Under Fire , Denzel Washington plays Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling, an army tank commander who accidentally fires on and destroys one of his own tanks during a nighttime battle in the closing days of the Persian...
Jun 13, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1996 science fiction conspiracy action thriller Chain Reaction, directed by Andrew Davis — whose previous UnclearPod films are The Package , Under Siege and The Fugitive — and starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz, Fred Ward, Kevin Dunn and Brian Cox. Chain Reaction revolves around a group of scientists at the University of Chicago who are working to convert hydrogen from water into clean energy. They fi...
May 17, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “A Time to Kill,” Joel Schumacher’s 1996 adaptation of a 1989 John Grisham novel by the same name. Starring Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey, with supporting performances from Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt, Charles S. Dutton, Ashley Judd, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris Cooper, “A Time to Kill” concerns the trial of Carl Lee Hailey, a black man on trial for capital murder after kil...
May 04, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched “Johnny Mnemonic,” a 1995 cyberpunk action film directed by Robert Longo and adapted from a William Gibson short story of the same name, by Gibson himself. “Johnny Mnemonic” stars Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Takeshi Kitano, Ice-T and Dina Meyer. In “Johnny Mnemonic,” Keanu Reeves plays Johnny, a “mnemonic courier” who transports sensitive data for corporations via storage implant in his brain. He takes a job that requires him to...
Apr 19, 2024•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle, John and special guest Laura Hudson (formerly of Wired and The Verge) watched the 1995 cyber-thriller “Hackers,” directed by Ian Softley and starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Fisher Stevens and Lorraine Bracco, with supporting roles for Matthew Lillard, Penn Jillette, Wendell Pierce, Marc Anthony and Felicity Huffman. “Hackers” centers on Dade Murphy, alias “Zero Cool,” who made hacking history 7 years before the events of t...
Mar 31, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s episode of the Patreon we discussed Sidney Lumet’s heady Cold War thriller Fail Safe, based on a novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, published in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fail Safe stars Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton and Larry Hagman with cinematography by Gerald Hirschfeld. The story moves between three characters: U.S Air Force General Black who has been having a recurring dream in which a Spanish matador kills a ...
Mar 15, 2024•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched Michael Bay’s weirdly prescient action thriller, “The Rock,” released in 1996 and starring Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage, Ed Harris, Michael Biehn and William Forsythe. The supporting cast is also chock full of compelling character actors, including John Spencer, Philip Baker Hall, John C. McKinley, Tony Todd and Bokeem Woodbine. In “The Rock,” Ed Harris plays General Francis Hummel, a disillusioned Vietnam War vet who is angry with the American g...
Mar 15, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched director Brian De Palma’s 1996 adaptation of Mission: Impossible , starring Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Henry Czerny (Kittridge!), Emmanuelle Béart, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Kristin Scott Thomas and Vanessa Redgrave. It was shot by frequent De Palma collaborator Stephen H. Burum and edited by Paul Hirsch. Screenplay by David Koepp and Robert Towne. Mission: Impossible , based on the television series, was the inaugural project of Tom Cruise’s product...
Mar 02, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched the 1996 action thriller slash high school drama The Substitute , directed by Robert Mandel — a prolific television director — and starring Tom Berenger, Ernie Hudson, Diane Venora, Marc Anthony, Luis Guzmàn and William Forsythe. In The Substitute , Berenger plays Jonathan Shale, a Vietnam veteran and mercenary who takes a break from the business of wet work after a botched operation in Cuba where several of his men were killed. He ret...
Feb 16, 2024•Transcript available on Metacast For this week's Patreon episode, we watched the 1976 thriller "Marathon Man," directed by John Schlesinger, written by William Goldman, and starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane and Marthe Keller. In "Marathon Man," Hoffman plays a graduate student who becomes entangled in a plot by a Nazi war criminal — and his U.S. government allies — to recover stolen diamonds. The film reflects an of-the-time fascination with the afterlife of the Nazi regime, and especi...
Jan 28, 2024•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome back to Unclear and Present Danger! It’s our first episode of the new year and we’re here with a pretty fun movie — “Executive Decision,” directed by Stuart Baird, produced by Joel Silver and starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Joe Morton, Steven Seagal and many others. Music by, as you might expect, Jerry Goldsmith. In “Executive Decision,” an intelligence analyst played by Russell and a group of commandos, led by Seagal, must infiltrate a passenger je...
Jan 28, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger — the last episode of the year! — we watched Tony Scott’s 1995 submarine action thriller, “Crimson Tide,” starring Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, Viggo Mortenson and James Gandolfini, among many others. And to discuss “Crimson Tide,” we have an esteemed guest! Tony Gilroy, who you may know from his work on the Bourne films, political thrillers like “State of Play,” “Beirut,” legal thrillers like “Michael Clayton” or the recent Star Wars...
Dec 31, 2023•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s episode of the podcast, Jamelle and John watched “City Hall,” a 1996 political drama directed by Harold Becker and starring Al Pacino, John Cusack, Danny Aiello, Bridget Fonda, David Paymer and Martin Landau. You’ll also notice a beardless Richard Schiff, Lauren Velez, and Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. In “City Hall,” Cusack plays Kevin Calhoun, the loyal deputy to Mayor John Pappas, played by Al Pacino. After a young boy and a police detective are killed in a sting go...
Dec 14, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s podcast, Jamelle and John watched the legendary Hong Kong director John Woo’s 1996 action thriller “Broken Arrow,” starring John Travolta, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo and Howie Long. In “Broken Arrow,” a rogue pilot, Air Force Major Vic Deakins, played by Travolta, steals two nuclear weapons with the intent to sell them back to the United States government for a profit. His co-pilot, Captain Riley Hale, played by Christian Slater, is left for dead during the th...
Dec 02, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week on the Patreon, Jamelle and John were joined by Beverly Gage — a professor of history at Yale University and author of "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century" — to discuss Clint Eastwood's 2011 J. Edgar Hoover biopic, simply titled "J. Edgar." We had such a good time discussing the movie with Professor Gage that we thought we should share this episode on the main feed as a bonus! We hope you enjoy it and we hope you consider signing up for the Patreon ...
Nov 19, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John watched Oliver Stone’s 1995 dramatization of the life and career of President Richard M. Nixon, appropriately titled “Nixon.” Like Stone’s other mid-century political film, “JFK,” it stars a murderer’s row of A-listers and character actors: Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins, Paul Sorvino, Mary Steenburgen, James Woods, Powers Boothe, Tony Goldwyn, J.T. Walsh and many, many others. To talk “Nixon” we were joined by the great Nicole Hemme...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “The Enemy Within,” a 1994 remake of John Frankenheimer’s “Seven Days in May,” starring Forest Whitaker and Jason Robards. Like the original film, “The Enemy Within” concerns a military plot to depose the president and take control of the U.S. government. Like the original film, our hero is an Army advisor who would rather defend the Constitution than his superiors. And like the original film, the story is a race aga...
Oct 28, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “Hidden Assassin” — also released under the name “The Shooter” — a 1995 action drama directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Dolph Lundgren and Maruschka Detmers. In “Hidden Assassin,” Lundgren plays a U.S. Marshall, Michael Dane, tasked with arresting a woman, played by Detmers, suspected of assassinating the Cuban ambassador to the United States. Time is of the essence; the Secretary of State will meet with...
Oct 14, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “12 Monkeys,” the 1995 science fiction film from Terry Gilliam starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer. “12 Monkeys” is an adaptation of sorts of a 1962 French short film “La Jetée,” in which scientists in a post-nuclear apocalypse future send a man back and forward through time in an effort to save their present. The man eventually succeeds in his mission, only to be killed — hi...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
