Big Daddy Dispatch: March 2023 (Patreon)

Dispatch Seventy Three March 3rd, 2023




Greetings WHM Family!

Welcome, to the most unpredictable month of the WHM Calendar! That's right, it's Listener Request Month, the only month that you, the listener, get to program! Those of you who've been hip to our Monday afternoon YouTube show, WHM On-Screen Live, already know the line-up for this month. If you're not subscribed to our YouTube Channel, you are seriously missing out! Anyways there were a few titles that genuinely took us by surprise (we're looking at YOU this month's WLM) and a ton we're excited for! Also, we have a kick-ass previously un-announced commentary coming your way!

The image above is from last week when Andrew and Chris joined our pals from the Cinephile and The Film Stage for a trivia night at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn. Lots of fun was had by all! Want to see us live in the future? Well...read on dear Patrons, read on! 

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

Image Credit: Intergang Prestige TV by Josh Hollis

A WHM SPRING WEST COAST TOUR IS HAPPENING!



<Duane the Rock Johnson voice> "Fiiinalllly, We Hate Movies has COME BACK to the WEST COAST!"

It's really happening! After nearly four years, your favorite movie podcast is heading back to some of our favorite cites on the West Coast! We are so happy to get out and play some shows for you folks! And they're coming up quick! The line up (as of now) is as follows:

Thursday, May 18th, we'll be at Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco talking about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home! 

Monday, May 22nd, we'll be at the Hollywood Improv in Los Angeles to talk about, Twins (1988)!

These are both going to be incredible shows and the tickets WILL GO FAST! So you want to get all your tickets at WHMPODCAST.COM/TOUR 

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 657 – The Big Lebowski (PATRONS ONLY)



For this month’s WLM, Andrew, Eric, Steve, and Chris head to the West Coast to shuffle around H.W. Bush-era Los Angeles with the Dude, Walter, and Donny (who loved bowling), as they aimlessly track down the missing wife of a local would-be magnate. Have the ultra-fans of this film ruined it over the years? Is this the best Coen Bros. movie? Would the Jackie Treehorn erotic empire have survived the transition from tapes to digital? All this, plus a report from the field about the unfortunate “sequel,” The Jesus Rolls.

Episode 658 – R.I.P.D.  

The film that birthed the saying that has haunted the WHM podcast since 2011 finally hits the main feed! And it fucking sucks! The boys ride into the afterlife with Yosemite Jeff Bridges and freshly murdered Ryan Reynolds as they try to stop some sort of ghost garbage involving Kevin Bacon, cumin allergies, and an eternal rewind button that sends all dearly departed ghost-zombie-ghouls back into the land of the living. Can we stop pretending that Ryan Reynolds is a movie star or is it too late? Is this the laziest view of the afterlife ever put to screen? Did Barry Sonnenfeld and the creative team behind Men in Black sue the production? They should have!


Episode 659 – Sleepless in Seattle

Andrew, Steve, Chris, and Eric travel back to the 90s, when talk-radio psychology could make you a minor celebrity and the chemistry between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan could power an entire naval fleet—even when he’s a widowed architect and she’s a journalist who has lost her mind and is looking to lose her job as well. Wouldn’t a man with the sheer number of allergies that Bill Pullman has in this movie be dead already? Can anyone render a creepy stalker more charming than Meg Ryan? Wouldn’t a caring, nurturing parent have already killed this life-devouring son a long time ago? Tragic, entirely random drownings happen near dock houses all the time!

Episode 660 – My Bloody Valentine (1981)

The gang heads to Valentine Bluffs, a small town either in Canada or Pennsylvania, to help reunite a crazed miner-gear-clad killer with the town he’s been meaning to slaughter for years. Is this the best of the straight-up Halloween rip-offs? What was our hero doing out in California before he was sent packing? Can we get a new cut where Hollis is the main hero of the movie? Fat men supporting fat men - it’s a beautiful thing.

Episode 661 – 3 Ninjas



These fucking brats have got to be stopped! The fellas get their white belts cinched and prepare to fight an international crime syndicate alongside *checks notes* three children and their grandfather. Has the FBI ever looked worse in a film? Does Rocky indeed love Emily? What the fuck is with the family song about killing teachers? Is the Douglas family surviving this crisis? Stay away from the diarrhea cup!

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: I kind of have a grab bag of stuff for this month. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous. Let’s take a look at a selection:

Constantine (2005, Francis Lawrence, dir.) - I remember when we played a show in L.A. years ago, I was sitting in my hotel room really hate-watching this movie before the show. But, I’ve changed my tune on this one. Keanu is great in this, even though he looks nothing like the comic version of John Constantine. I kind of really dig this West Coast Constantine take, though. Lotta wild supporting performances here, including Rachel Weisz and the great Pruitt Taylor Vince. I will say this, while he’s having fun and chewing scenery hardcore, I still can’t get behind Gavin Rossdale as an actor. Serenade me with all 13 tracks from Razorblade Suitcase any time, but that’s a “meh” on the acting. 

The X-Files (1998, Rob Bowman, dir.) - I rewatched this for the first time in a minute to prepare for an appearance on the Peak Show podcast, and wowza, this takes me back. I don’t think I even rewatched it before that last dreadful movie came out, or before the legacy seasons that aired a few years back. It’s pitch-perfect X-Files and all-around great sci-fi storytelling. I love the addition of Martin Landau as another conspiracy-minded doctor. His scenes with Duchovny are great. It would’ve served as a perfect cap on the series (and franchise as a whole), but alas, Fox drove a dump truck filled with money up to Chris Carter’s house and the show continued… 

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004, Wes Anderson, dir.) - I hadn’t seen this movie front to back since the first time I caught it in theaters. Back then, I was unfortunately glued to a stool in a projection booth, watching the film through a porthole window because there were some issues with the plattered 35mm film print, so I had to keep watch in case disaster struck. Needless to say, it was a horrible, albeit ironic, way for me to watch the movie about the sour-puss, deep-sea explorer. It’s a real left-turn from Tenenbaums in a lot of ways, especially with Noah Baumbach collaborating on the screenplay with Wes Anderson. You can totally feel Baumbach’s anger and cynicism, something Anderson doesn’t really have in the same way. I highly recommend going back to this one if it’s been a while for you. 

Ikarie XB 1 (1963, Jindrich Polák, dir.) - This is a neat sci-fi film that came out of Czechoslovakia in the early-60’s and it’s a great example of pre-moon landing, Soviet-era sci-fi. It’s about a team of explorers who travel into the far reaches of space in search of a habitable planet for Earthlings to move to since our planet is, you guessed it, dying! It’s a slow, quiet film that Gene Roddenberry and Stanley Kubrick both 100% saw in the years leading up to the creation of both Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I don’t see that it’s streaming anywhere, at least according to Just Watch, but there is a blu-ray floating around out there. If you’re into this sorta thing, I highly recommend checking it out. 

I Am Wrath (2016, Chuck Russell, dir.) - This movie, directed by the same guy who gave us The Mask, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, The Blob remake, Eraser, Bless The Child, and The Scorpion King, directed this pretty tepid crime film starring John Travolta as a guy who goes all Paul Kersey on some fellas that murdered his wife, played by a blink-and-you-miss-her Rebecca DeMornay Christopher Meloni co-stars as his former “Intelligence Agency” buddy who helps him go around murdering people. It’s like Death Wish meets John Wick, meets me taking a nap. It’s pretty bad, but there are some okay kills. Of Travolta’s character coming out of retirement to kill again, someone literally utters the line, “You just woke up the Devil,” which, come on. Funniest part of the film is when Travolta’s character gets a huge back tattoo that says I AM WRATH in massive letters. Made me wonder if this was the only time a film character got a titular tattoo on-screen? 


Chris: 

Party Girl – Of what I’ve seen, I have not been the biggest fan of Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s work. Though I have not made time to revisit, remember not liking her Madeline adaptation at all, even as a film for children, and Some Girl(s) is yet another unbearable example of what seems like an industry-wide misunderstanding of Adam Brody’s appeal. She also worked on Inventing Anna for Netflix, which I wasn’t fond of, but Party Girl, her debut from 1995, is a delight. It is primarily a showcase for Parker Posey, which is something I will never turn down, even in these post-Louie times. Released two years after she lit up the screen as the tyrannical leader of the popular girls in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, Party Girl has a bouncy, unfussy charm that graces some of the best indies of the 90s, but grounds it with surprising sincerity in Posey’s titular would-be socialite turning toward a career at the New York Public Library. Though there are certainly some patches of cultural insensitivity (that I would argue play toward the character’s militant naivete that she finally sheds, but that’s just me), but her romance with Omar Townsend’s Mustafa, a Lebanese falafel-cart owner, really binds this film and makes it feel more cohesive and emotionally satisfying than just a series of events starring Parker Posey…which yes, I would also watch. Maybe I’m a von Scherler Mayer-head after all.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance – Is this the best Soderbergh I’ve seen this decade? No, that would be Kimi, his superb tech-thriller from last year with a best-yet performance by Zoe Kravitz. It is, to me, about on par with the other two films he’s made and released over the last three years or so, Let Them All Talk and No Sudden Move, and speaks more directly to where he is in his career than either of those. It’s a movie about doing something you know you’ll have to compromise yourself over but not preferring any of the alternatives, expressed in Mike Lane’s budding professional, quasi-sexual, and maybe romantic relationship with his new financier, Max, played by Salma Hayek in some of the best work she’s done in a long time. She takes him to London to direct (not star in!) a strip-tastic retelling of a stuffy period piece at the theater she inherited in her pending divorce. What the film is lacking is the visual and rhythmic tightness that the other three Soderbergh films of the 20s boasted, but I’m not necessarily counting that as an issue. The intermittent slack here makes this film feel more like a hangout film, and as Mike comes to realize that, for whatever grudges he harbors towards the business side of what he does, this is what he does with his life and he doesn’t like half-assing it. There’s a comfort to the movie, the director’s diverse and nuanced depiction of working relationships this time dusted with a sense of cosmic acceptance of mistakes, miscommunications, hang-ups and idiosyncrasies. And hell, even if you don’t quite buy the personal or intimate undercurrents that I felt here, this still would have to be the best romantic comedy to come out in lord-knows how long.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey – Avoid as if it carried the plague. This is the first film I’ve seen to fully copy the Terrifier playbook but with a fair-use twist, which is to say that if you ever wanted to see extended sequences of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet torturing and slaughtering screaming women for funsies, you have yet another movie to get off to and I think it’s already secured funding for a sequel. What a time to be alive.

Eric:  Here we go, gang. The definitive power-rankings of kung-fu movies that use the “Flying Guillotine” and please hit me up on Twitter (@EricSzyszka) if I am missing any because I'd love to expand my “Flying Guillotine” knowledge. For the uninitiated, the “Flying Guillotine” is a weapon that's basically a basket with a rope attached. They toss the basket, get it over your head and pull hard activating the blades in the basket and decapitate yout. Heads roll in these movies. It's insane to see.

1 – The Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976). A sequel to the excellent One Armed Boxer (1971) also starring Jimmy Wang Yu. This is a film that was lost and damaged to the degree that it will look like shit when you watch it, but roll with it and accept it's part of that grindhouse charm. You'll notice a guy stretches his arms an impossible amount in this and it's 100% the inspiration for that Street Fighter video game character. So it's worth your time for that alone. Anyway, the man plot is that the One Armed Boxer of the One Armed Boxer killed two disciples of the Master of the Flying Guillotine. So in this movie, an old blind man who wears a gigantic prominent swastika starts chopping heads off anyone that's one-handed until the ultimate final confrontation. Another perk for this movie is the old kung fu master's secondary weapon to the Flying Guillotine is just bombs. Yeah, kinda like grenades.

2 – The Flying Guillotine (1975). This is a Shaw Brothers movie while the other two aren't so it has the best production value and a much more coherent plot. It also started the Flying Guillotine craze, I think? I really loved this movie. Master, capitalizing on this movie, probably wins though because of the sheer insanity level. It follows men entering into a battalion of Flying Guillotines that an evil Emperor is putting together to become a secret assassination squad. It's pretty amazing to see a dude toss a roped basket off a roof in the night, bullseye some noble's head and rip it right off. Eventually one of these soldiers questions the ethics here and abandons the unit – then a hunt for him is on. It's great.

3 – The Fatal Flying Guillotines (1977). This was billed to me as some kind of prequel to Master. I don't know if it really is or not though. Sometimes sequels to kung fu movies completely change continuity of the stories, for example:The 36th Chamber of the Shaolin is probably one of the very best kung fu movies but the sequel, Return to the 36thChamber isn't very good at all, but it stars Gordon Liu who was the lead in the first movie! In this one? He's a different guy altogether! So it can get confusing sometimes. Anyway, this movie. The Fatal Flying Guillotines has some good kills but that's about it. I find it a skippable one, but one charming aspect is the versions in circulation right now have graphic violence re-inserted into the film. Like one second it looks like a normal movie, but then there's a like video sourced shot of a guy shoving his fingers into a man's chest and blood blasting out, then we cut back to the better quality.

Steve:  Oh lord, what a month! I took a very rare, NON-show related vacation towards the end of this short month, which did put a small cramp into my watching, but not enough to stop me from recapping some shit here! I promise! 

Knock at the Cabin – My knock at the Cabin? He's far too contrarian. Kidding folks! I'm in no way an M. Night Shyamalan completist, because that would be as excruciating as actually being a character in one of his movies. No, he had a significant cold streak starting with the well shot, well acted, but dreadful The Village, which continued up to about this movie. Sure, Split and Old were both kind of fun and memorable (more than you can say about a lot of films), but he hasn't had a movie that has worked for me like this since Signs. It centers on an absolutely transcendent performance by Dave Bautista, who is just full stop a good actor. No qualifiers needed anymore. Dude's great. It's a tense, and ultimately beautiful story about the end of the world, that you should absolutely give a shot, even if you think you're tired of M. Night. 

Infinity Pool – I really like where Brandon Cronenberg's career is going and this is a movie that makes me even more interested in his next film.Ultimately this one is lacking, if only a little. It's got a really cool concept,  pitch black comedy, and a fantastic Mia Goth performance, but is missing the narrative punch you want to end this thing and bring it all together. A wild ride, but it just lacks a real soul. Ah, well. Next time, Brando! 

The Sting –  Yeah, that one. I was on a bit of a Newman kick, watched Road to Perdition (mostly holds up! give it a shot!), so I decided to finally give this one a spin. It's mostly really fun. A big, audacious heist movie that kind of left me wanting, especially with how well this one is regarded. Redford and Newman are terrific, but are kept apart far too much for their chemistry to shine. It's a fun one and the score is terrific, but it's ultimately a little square and the direction is a bit workmanlike for my tastes. 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantimania – Two weeks later and I'm still pretty pissed off about this one! I like the first Ant-Man, but I'm in no way a super fan of this mini-franchise, but this film has to be the nadir of the MCU, Jonathan Majors or no Jonathan Majors. I'll say it, Majors is terrific, and his Kang is awfully appealing, but why does he have to work through this piddling crap before getting a movie he can really shine in? The Quantumn Realm is woefully undefined. We're never really clear what the stakes are, just that Kang is doing vaguely BAD stuff there and if he were to escape he would then do BAD stuff in other spaces. It can't be overstated how rotten this all looks, so much so that Marvel should be able to be the subject of a class-action lawsuit or something. This is at least as bad as whatever happened at Camp Lejeune.* Bad reviews clearly aren't getting through to them! 

*I'm kidding, please don't forward me any petitions.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Steve: Yeah, Chris stole my answer with Downey Jr. I can think of a lot of actors current and otherwise that deserved better careers, but your question is about actors who make bad choices which end up hurting them. Downey's good because he actively wants to make bad movies, he has all the money in the world and still wanted to make that Dolittle movie. Dude's got a problem. I would say Chris Pine is in danger of falling into this trap soon too. Hell or High Water was a long time ago and he's just on a shit streak a mile long at this point (WW84, Don't Worry Darling, whatever the hell this Dungeons and Dragons movie is going to be). Also, Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is probably on the long list of my favorite movies of the last 25 years and that has a lot to do with her performance, but she seems uninterested to show that kind of vulnerability again, which is a shame.Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Mike from  Raleigh, NC, who asks: 


Watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I realized Shatner could have been a critically acclaimed actor if his ego didn't keep better writers and directors at bay. Who else do you think could have been a more celebrated actor if they didn't get in their own way?

Andrew: While I don’t think I agree that any amount of good will, patience, loss of ego, or human decency could’ve made William Shatner into a more critically acclaimed thespian, I’ll play the game anyway. Let’s see. I think Mike Myers is a good example. Dude is famously hard to work with and I think after a while, folks just got tired of it. He was apparently even shitty to Dana Carvey on the set of the first Wayne’s World movie, which seems so crazy to me. I think if he was easier to work with, you could’ve seen the Myers’ star rise just as high, but in a different way. We’d have more live action, original comedies from him, instead of so much Shrek stuff where they get to hide him in a recording booth away from other actors. Oh, and another one could be Edward Norton. Dude is a notorious turd and totally blew it with his chance as Bruce Banner due to being difficult on-set. Much to the delight of Mark Ruffalo, I’m sure. 

Chris: I’m not sure if he would be more celebrated or could even, but there is a world where Robert Downey Jr. spent the late 90s into the aughts and tens starring in adult films from major directors that I would have loved to see. He’s good as Tony Stark but is he ever going to make another movie where he’s even at A Scanner Darkly level again? I’m skeptical, but would love to be surprised. Same is true of a dozen or so other actors in the MCU, honestly, but I relent—can’t all be Disney bashing. The only one I think of often is Clayne Crawford, who is fantastic in the underseen and undervalued series Rectify and apparently was a complete piece of shit behind the scenes on Fox’s TV adaptation of Lethal Weapon with Damon Wayans. He was recently in The Killing of Two Lovers, which was pretty good, but I can’t help but think the Lethal Weapon blow-up cost him some big parts or some momentum at the very least. I hope he gets another chance - he is an astonishing dramatic performer when he is given a character to really dig into.

Eric: More celebrated if they didn't get in their own way? I think this could be applied to a lot of the “dicey” Classic Hollywood guys. I really loved all those old Errol Flynn movies and even read some biographies on him back in the day and I think he definitely eventually began to mistake sleaze for charm. A ladies man as a defining quality might seem like a fun notion, but dying a drunk, with a questionable of questionable age, at 50 probably made him a lot less celebrated today than he could or would be.A more contemporary answer: I think Emile Hirsch could've really been something, but who knows, I know getting into a physical fight with a film executive or whatever happened didn't help!

MARCH 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 this MARCH for Listener Request Month! 

Episode 663 — Driven (2001)

Episode 664 —  Equilibrium

Episode 665 — Hard Rain

Episode 666  —  The Covenant 

Patreon Episodes:

Patreon Exclusive We Love Movies — The Man Who Would Be King - AVAILABLE NOW!

Animation Damnation — Ugly Americans: "Treegasm" (s1, e5)

The Nexus: Deep Space Nine: "In the Pale Moonlight" (s6 e19) Voyager: "Tsunkatse" (s3, e15)

Gleep Glossary: R5-D4

Melr0210: 90210: "Meeting Mr. Pony" (s2, e25),  Melrose Place: "Cold Turkey"  (s2, e12)

Synchable Commentary: John Wick



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

PATREON RSS BUG

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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! That's where you can catch all the new WHM On-Screen Live episodes (see above) as well as see Eric Roberts' Cameo and so much more! We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like George Bailey as Michael Meyers, Chamber of Secretsmentary, 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 Expendables 2, City Slickers, 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! 




It's back in stock, baby! You can get a KICK ASS edition of the super fun B-Movie Scanner Cop, which includes our commentary track, which isn't available anywhere else! Get yours here! 

Eric and Ben are back in the the blue (ironically of course!) and they're talking about honest to goodness DEATH SQUADS on patrol in Los Santos! Listen here!  



Did you know that Andrew has a website? No, it's not an OnlyFans (yet), it's a cool blog for some musings and Jupin-centric goings on. Lookit that fancy graphic from Raphael Sarmento! Check it out at andrewjupin.com

If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our TeePublic store! Our newest design is the kick ass Felipe Sobreiro art for our Thor: Love and Thunder show! Also we have the new "Crispy Critters" design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill!  We also have a ton of great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, Demon-o's Pizza, 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! 


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