Big Daddy Dispatch: August 2022 (Patreon)

Dispatch Sixty Seven, July 29th, 2022



Greetings WHM Family!

And just like that, Season 12 has come to a close! What an incredible season it was, folks, and as always we have you to thank! Thank you for staying with us all these years, inspiring us to do more moronic jokes, and thank you for plunking down your hard earned cash to keep this great machine moving. We have A LOT of great stuff planned for you for Season 13, most of which we can't announce just yet, however one thing we can announce is a MAJOR SCHEDULING SHAKE UP. 

A major scheduling shake up, you say? Yes! After a few great years of We Love Movies month dropping in December and thereby preventing us from doing some of the bad Christmas movie content we've all come to love, we've decided to move up WLM Month thirty days early! This November we'll be enjoying five fantastic Tuesdays of FREE We Love Movies Content! Full Schedule to drop here in the November BDD, so stay tuned for that! Also, another fun wrinkle, on the Patreon $5.00 feed, instead of a WLM episode, we'll be swapping it to a WHM, so that we still get to shit on something terrible in November while celebrating some really great films on the free feed! Get Hyped WHM Family! 


Banner Credit: We Hate Movies The Big Daddy Dispatch by Felipe Sobreiro

Image Credit:  Nanook the dog enjoying WHM by @nethknowles via Twitter

LIVE VIRTUAL SHOW !TONIGHT! ON GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE



It's happening, folks! The boys are getting back on the virtual stage to talk one of the suckiest fan service sequels that ever sucked, that's right it's Jason Reitman's turn behind the Ecto-1 wheel with Ghostbusters: Afterlife! Join us live tonight at 8pm Eastern Standard Time for a really fun live show, which will most certainly be filled with Muncher jokes. You've been warned.

Also, if you're game, you can pay a little extra and get an invite to a POST SHOW Q&A! Right after the show we'll be hopping back on the stream for a fun, low-key Q&A session answering YOUR questions! We've never done this before and we've been really looking forward to it! 

Can't make the show on tonight, 7/29 at 8pm EST? No problem! This show will stream from the Moment House platform for SEVEN DAYS after broadcast, so if you buy your ticket and you have to work or something, you still get to enjoy watching the boys talk about the latest and least great entry in the Ghostbusters franchise! 

Head on over to the Moment House website for tickets and info! Hope to see you on tonight! 

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 619 – Thor: The Dark World



Just as Thor: Love & Thunder plops into movie bowls worldwide, the boys head back to maybe the dullest MCU entry to date, in which Thor tries to get his girlfriend back and fights Christopher Eccleston, buried under 5 hard miles of makeup and wardrobe. Is this the most TV-like of the MCU films? What’s with the apocalyptic red piss? Why are they talking about Moby so much? Is it their birth-RIGHT?!

Episode 620 – Iron Man 3 (PATREON EXCLUSIVE)

Fair is fair. To coincide with one of the worst MCU titles being released in theaters, and another one of the worst being covered on the main feed, the guys dedicate their WLM episode to one of the absolute best, in which Iron Man must take on a former would-be acolyte and the Mandarin to save the world. Are they going to be doing these Ben Kingsley impressions for the whole episode? Why must it be so difficult to give Shane Black small amounts of money to make only good or great movies? Has there ever been a more personal and distinct film to come out of the Marvel monolith? Has RDJ ever felt so keyed into the history and personal importance of a character? Seriously, some of you have money…give it to Shane Black to make another movie.

Episode 621 – Clash of the Titans (2010)



Release the computer glop! Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Stephen head out into the world of the gods with Sam Worthington, Mads Mikkelsen, and Gemma Arterton, who might be a ghost? What the fuck is going on with these scorpions? Why does everything look cheap in the bad way? What exactly was the reasoning for the culture’s obsession with the Kraken? Don’t worry, we spend most of the time praising the original film.

Episode 622 – American Pie

Pie-Fuckers of the World—unite and take over! The fellas head back to high school to witness a quartet of complete assholes do crimes, sexual and otherwise, to get laid before the morning after prom. Why were teenagers taking sex advice from Casey Affleck? Why isn’t Jim in jail over the Nadya stream? Are Blink-182 and the American Pie franchise linked together for eternity? Natasha Lyonne, you deserve better!

Episode 623 – The Lost Boys



To end the summer and Season 12 out, Andrew, Stephen, Eric, and Chris head out to Santa Carla, the murder capital of the world, where Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland do battle and nearly make out in a fight for vampire supremacy. Are the Coreys a drag or a benefit to this movie? Who is writing these vampire comic books? Is Chris Cabin gearing up to be the next Rush Limbaugh? More super-dogs please!

WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?

This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.

Andrew: July is always a wild month because every year we are burning the candle at both ends to finish production on whatever WHM season we happen to be wrapped up in, and this year was no exception. In order to give ourselves that blessed month off in August, we need to get tons of stuff done in advance, so most of my July watching was either for WHM Prime, or for our rockin’ August Patreon lineup—either that or films I’d start at like 11:30pm and immediately fall asleep to, which I never count as watches obviously. That said, I was able to squeeze a few “for me” watches in over the last few weeks, so here are some high/lowlights:

Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck — Folks, it’s a perfect film. I was so thrilled to finally cover up this cinematic blindspot and it did not disappoint. Cher and Nic Cage are fabulous together, but Cher herself is so goddamn captivating in this film. Ugh. Wow, what a picture. Incredible on-location New York as well. 

Gary Alazraki’s Father of the Bride (2022) — What an unfortunate adaptation of Edward Streeter’s novel. My wife is a native of Miami, so one of the biggest reasons for checking out the film in the first place was the hope to spy some solid Miami footage on-screen, however besides some b-roll, the majority of the film was shot in Atlanta, so that was a bust. The biggest problem the film has is they made Andy Garcia’s character so completely unlikable, you’re absolutely not rooting for him to change and win his family back—you hope for Gloria Estefan to go through with the divorce proceedings. Skip this. 

Jim Wynorski’s Deathstalker II — So ever since our episode on Clash of the Titans (2010), and my subsequent viewing of the far superior 1981 version of the film, I’ve really fallen down a rabbit hole of 70s/80s sci-fi/fantasy films, or as I’ve dubbed it, the "Wizards ’n Shit" sub-genre. The great thing is, a ton of these are available on our beloved Tubi TV for free. This Deathstalker sequel, directed by Chopping Mall’s Jim Wynorski, is a great example of these types of films done right. It’s got tons of violence, a lot of goofy comedic moments, and yes folks, it is indeed super-horny. Now, the real tricky thing with this genre is that unfortunately a few of these films get kinda rape-y and edgelord-y which blows, so just use caution when perusing this minefield of a sub-genre. There’s good stuff out there, but also a lot of trash not worth your time.  

Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon — I’m more or less a NWR fan, but I just completely missed this one when it was out in 2016. I then proceeded to borrow a good friend’s blu-ray like 4 years ago and only just this past weekend checked it out—sorry, Russ! It’s not one of my fave Refn films, but it kept me invested the whole time. Fanning and Malone are great in the film and boy howdy, the latter’s “big” scene toward the end was something I truly was not ready for — I think I’ll definitely revisit this at some point because I do believe there’s a lot going on there that would benefit from more than one viewing.  

Chris: Well, folks, Jordan Peele is three-for-three on masterworks. With the lone exception of Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, Nope is just about the best and most ambitious film that’s been released this year. Considering Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon got kicked to 2023, I doubt enough great movies will be released this year to cast it out of my top five, but who knows? Maybe it will be better than I am thinking right now.

Regardless, like Peele’s previous film, Us, Nope dramatically escalates the scale of the director’s vision, which means you will never find anything like the kind of diamond-cut clarity that Get Out boasts. I do get the feeling that part of the general sense of decline since Get Out is due to a certain (large) sect of viewers prizing tightness and a familiar sense of narrative satisfaction over the thrill and dazed amazement of the new. Nope calls on the entire history of summer blockbusters, both visually and in the script, but never defaults into acting or trying to replicate those films. On first pass, Twister, Jaws, Tremors, and Cloverfield are all referenced, along with flecks of other big-tent hits, but the film also regularly suggests a hostility toward those kinds of movies. As much as he seems to be questioning the value of presenting the suffering of Black people as part of an entertainment, his bigger goal is to ask why we want to see it in the first place. Is there any value in, say, casting a live monkey in a major role on a network sitcom as the child and sibling of humans other than being able to say you can do it?

Six days after seeing it, I’m still thinking about all the little details and all the major performances in Nope, which cost a little over $65 million to make. In comparison, the Russo Brothers’ The Gray Man cost upwards of $200 million and is impossible to remember. No image in Netflix’s latest would-be blockbuster was made with care. No action in it was made without the adjoining thought that someone is getting paid to do that. No human emotion is expressed without clear indication from those in front of and behind the camera that it is completely fabricated and has no lasting meaning. There may be no more synthetic film ever made than this one, and the fact that Ryan Gosling is tied to it and its proposed sequels for the foreseeable future is devastating.

Eric: I'm so behind on movies. It's too hot out. It's too hot to even get in a car, walk, whatever to a movie theater. I will though. I will gain strength over the coming weeks. I promise you.

So here's an indoors TV round up of action movies:

9 Deaths of the Ninja, which can be found as “Nine Deaths of the Ninja” on Tubi, has Shô Kosugi and I guess a spy organization of sorts going up against a Dr. Strangelove reference Nazi character. It's pretty wild yet maintains a sogginess I was not fond of.

I had a lot more fun with The Protector (1985) featuring the ICONIC pairing of Jackie Chan in his prime and... Danny Aiello. Danny Aiello stands around and looks dis-gurst-ing in this and still managed to almost marry Cher inMoonstruck just two years later.

Then I had the most fun with Heroes of the East (1978) starring Gordon Liu. It is chef's kiss. Basically it's about a Chinese martial arts student who marries a Japanese woman and has to go up against Japan's strongest masters. Guess what happens next. Yep! They fight!

Steve: This month has felt about three months long, which likely has to do with the heat and our workload, but thank god it's nearly done! Here's some fun stuff I caught up with this summer. 

Thor: Love and Thunder: What a waste of time! There's definitive rot in the MCU in this 4th phase and they would do well to look into where it's coming from before continuing to build on this foundation. You can indeed have humor in these films, but it can't come at the expense of literally everything else unless you are going to have the balls to do a true comedy. Until then, you need to mete it out. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, got this and Michael Rooker's Mary Poppins moment remains one of the most moving moments captured in the MCU. They had a chance here with the Jane Foster storyline and it just felt garbled. Christian Bale's Gor the God Butcher deserved better. 

Return of the Living Dead: My wife and I were hanging out with a friend on July 3rd and we were looking for a fun horror movie to watch. Well, why not watch a fun, goofy horror movie that takes place on July 3rd?! I'd been meaning to check this one out for a while and it does not disappoint in the slightest. Just a fun, disgusting, zombie horror jag that knows exactly how to be silly and scary at the same time. 

Devil in a Blue Dress: File this under, FINALLY. A movie I missed in the 90's, that I've always meant to check out finally came off my list this month and hot damn, what took me so long? This movie is a stone cold classic, full stop. Denzel Washington as electric as ever, elbow jutting his way through a mystery that threatens to tear down all that he's built, and that danger is carried on his face the entire time. No one could've played that better. Nobody. Also? How about Don Fucking Cheadle dropping a performance that has to be in the scene stealing hall of fame. Fuck. I kinda want to watch it again. 

Anonymous Club: I checked this out last week a few days before I saw Courtney Barnett in concert, and if this is playing in your town and you've ever liked Courtney Barnett's music, I would highly recommend it. A brief, intimate portrait of Barnett's creative process and the various anxieties that plagues it. Shot on beautiful 16mm, it's best seen in a theater, if you can.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Steve:  Sara, first of all let me tell you that there are no repertory theaters in Jersey City and that's a damn crime. If there was one, I'd never leave this city. As it stands though, my favorite repertory theaters have been mentioned already in this thread, so I'll just give you fun experiences that I've had at them.

The Spectacle Theater in Williamsburg Brooklyn. As Eric, said this one is an absolute must. This one is just so damn fun, you have to go a few times a year (I do). Eric already mentioned my favorite film I found there (White Star), but my second would have to be Ferat Vampire, a Czechoslovak horror film about, you guessed it, a vampire car that can feed on humans via the gas pedal. Just a one-of-a-kind experience at the Spectacle, every time. 

The Metrograph also gets some great repertory stuff, and has the GOOD GRACE to show them before Midnight. My favorite showing there was Akira, just my favorite viewing of a movie that I've seen half a dozen times.

Finally, Film Forum in NYC, is one I'm at almost enough to justify a membership, but not quite. I've seen a ton there, but my favorite thus far has to be watching the restoration of Do the Right Thing, watching that movie in the dead of summer in an old school New York City theater is a kind of magic.Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Sara from Jersey City who asks: 


"What has been your favorite viewing experience at a rep/indie/non-chain movie theatre? And Steve, are there any in Jersey City??"

Andrew: It may not be my favorite viewing experience at one of these places, but it was certainly a transformative one: I recall going to see David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive at the Spectrum, which, at the time, was Albany’s only indie (or “art house”, ugh) movie theater. Chris and I grew up about 20-25 minutes north of Albany in the suburbs, so I didn’t really get to experience any kind of non-chain movie theater until my friends and I had driver’s licenses. (My parents were NOT driving almost a half hour to take us to the movies.) It was the fall of 2001 and I remember sitting in the theater (one I’d already been to a few times before this particular screening, so it wasn't my first time there) and feeling my jaw dropped the whole time. I was fairly ignorant of David Lynch before that moment. I knew what Twin Peaks was and had heard of Eraserhead without having seen it, but that was really it. Sitting there letting all two hours and twenty-seven minutes wash over me, I remember thinking, “I might not be getting this, but I didn’t even know movies could be like this!” And that right there is why it was such an important screening experience for me—it was the moment when I realized the medium held so much more potential than I ever knew. 

Chris: Here’s a few that pop out to me:

Visconti’s The Leopard at Film Forum – It’s an easy movie to get lost in regardless of the screen size but god damn, Burt Lancaster’s immensity as a performer never felt so effortlessly conveyed and overwhelming than here. Unless you break out in hives at the idea of European arthouse filmmaking, I can’t recommend it enough.

Colossal Youth at BAM – Portugal’s greatest living filmmaker has only made four films in the new millennium, and this is the biggest and best of the bunch. Following the ghostly presence of Ventura, an elderly, philosophical peasant roaming around Lisbon’s Fontainhas neighborhood. The images are enormous, spacious, and haunted, not unlike the images of the West in studio Westerns, a genre that largely focuses on the poverty-stricken on the outskirts of a barely progressing society as well. The hours do not go by like a pleasant breeze, but as with the films of BélaTarr or Tsai Ming-liang, the deliberately slow pace and experience of duration in images is part of what makes a film so seemingly alienating feel entirely enchanting.

Che: Part 1 & 2/The Master at Ziegfeld – Two of the most supreme masterpieces to be released over the last two decades, overwhelming and unrelenting as presented on one of most immaculate screens New York had to offer until the rent-seekers had their day.

Lola Montes at the Walter Reade Theater – Not too long before he passed, Andrew Sarris introduced the new restoration of this absolute barnburner by Max Ophüls tha God. He said a few words of curiosity and praise, thanked the audience, then ambled to the back where he sat one empty seat away from me. Looked over a few times while the movie was going. He was beaming, and I’d like to imagine that’s how he was for the entire runtime.


Eric: I think the best movie theaters are the non-chains or the non-big chains anyway. I really love the Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn. I especially loved it when I used to be a closer stone's throw—I am now in a much further than a singular stone's throw, the stone would have to stop find another stone, and to toss that one as well. Well, I don't know what I am talking about anymore but it's a great movie theater. It's small, it's dank, I saw Roland Klick's White Star there with Steve. My wife and I got into their Internet streams over the pandemic (wish they still did them to be honest!) and that's how I got into a lot of Kung Fu stuff recently. Well, a few months ago we went to a Fist Church showing in person and it was magical despite being the only people to actually show up. You all missed the excellent Battle Wizard (1977) that one weekend.Another great one is the Story Screen theater in Beacon, New York. If you're ever slightly upstate, I highly recommend checking it out. They do mostly new releases but I really like how they function two fold: big Hollywood release in Theater 1, and smaller and indie-er fare in Theaters 2, and 3. They even have beer and a great restaurant attached to it.However, I think the most memorable / potential favorite small theater viewing experience was visiting to the Living Room Theater in Portland, Oregon for Alien: Covenant. We were catching the movie prior to our flight back to New York and I decided, why wouldn't I just finish all these edibles now? That alien felt very real, my friends. I was beyond high in the lobby afterwards and was approached by a grampie who asked me my opinions on the film, where I rated it in the franchise, and all that nonsense. I felt my brain slide down my entire body and out my pant leg.

AUGUST SCHEDULE

Say what? The Schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter you get a sneak peak at what we're putting out for this month! 

Episode 624— Escape Plan: Live from Boston

Episode 625 —  Robocop 3: Live from Detroit, featuring the Season 12 finale of the VHS Trailer game! 

Episode 626 —  Under Siege: Live from Charlotte

Episode 627 —  Stop or My Mom Will Shoot: Live from DC

Episode 628 —  Footloose (1984): Live from Nashville



Patreon Episodes:

Patreon Exclusive We Love Movies — Robocop (1987)

Animation Damnation — Dilbert: "Little People" (s1,e8)

The Nexus: TOS: "Day of the Dove" (s3 e7) TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise" (s3, e15)

Gleep Glossary: Mace Windu

Melr0210: 90210: "A Walsh Family Christmas" (s2, e18) Melrose Place: "Of Bikes and Men"  (s2, e5)

Once in a Lifetime: The Wrong Roommate 

Find all this crap and enjoy it legally, just like we do! Now!

PATREON RSS BUG

If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try un-subscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader." 

Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support!

UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION



Our Youtube Channel continues to kick-ass folks! We have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David! Muppet Hitchcock Presents, Egg Lawyer, Lak Sivrak, the Wolfman of Star Wars, Michael Biehn at Comic Con, Loose Loomis, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboard episode! Complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, Full Episodes like The Commuter, Over The Top, Eternals, Saw III, and Resident Evil (2002). Like we said above these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already! 



We just want to let you folks know that the Scanner Cop 1 & 2 collection is back in stock on the Vinegar Syndrome website! Why should you care? Well, A.) Those movies are awesome and B.) Scanner Cop features a synchable, hilarious commentary by your friends at We Hate Movies! Get your copy now before it's off the market! 

OH Snap! Eric and Ben are revisiting their classic series, Blame it on Outer Space on the TJ Hooker feed and you can't afford not to listen  Listen here!  

If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our TeePublic store! We've got awesome new designs including Steven Segall as a pink video game character you've heard of and MINGO (copyright forthcoming) shirt from MelR0210 both by (you guessed it) Felipe Sobreiro! We also have a ton of great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast design and many more, with more to come! 

That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! See you next month for Season 13! 

Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies