Big Daddy Dispatch: January 2024 (Patreon)

Dispatch Eighty Two December 30, 2023

Greetings WHM Family!

We did it, we made it to 2024! Nobody saw that coming! We had a busy as hell December including a live show and a ton of holiday shows that somehow included an ill-advised 3-hour discussion of Love Actually. What the hell is wrong with us? Well, the good news is whatever it is, won’t be fixed as we’re jumping headlong into 2024 with more of shows, more jokes, and yes, more gooning! We’ve got a ton planned for 2024 that you are going to LOVE including some live dates we just might announce very soon! Get excited for 2024 because WE ARE!

Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Live from Jersey City by Chelsea Jupin

Image Credit: We Hate Movies Holiday Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 710 – Lethal Weapon  (PATRONS ONLY)

For this month’s Christmas WLM, Andrew, Eric, Chris, and Steve hit the streets of sunny, crime-ridden L.A. with Riggs and Murtaugh during the first days of their partnership, investigating the murder of Murtaugh’s old army buddy. What is the importance of being designated a Christmas movie? Has any man even come close to the lion’s mane Gibson sports in this? What exactly is the power structure between Mr. Joshua and his boss? Do you want to jump? Do ya?!? That’s just fine with us!

Episode 711 – Die Hard 2

The boys rush to the airport to help somehow-forgotten American hero John McClane pick up his wife, avoid his in-laws and children, and outwit a team of domestic terrorists with ties to the American military. He also must deal with Dennis Franz and the hot way he talks. Where do we get the William Sadler work-out routine? Are airports inherently boring places to set movies? Has there ever been a bigger supporting cast of top-tier character actors outside of an Altman film? Why isn’t there more Reginald VelJohnson? Either way, Renny Harlin seems to be sitting pretty.

Episode 712 – Silent Night, Deadly Night 

Not the “garbage day” one, the almost good one! The fellas avoid getting a close-shave with a sharp axe when a deeply disturbed young man goes bug-fuck and chops up several denizens of his small town. What is it like to work at a small-town toy store? Can one possibly be normal after seeing Santa execute your father? Would a cop get in trouble for shooting an innocent man in a Santa suit? Never trust the weird shit your grandparents say about Santa, kids! Important lesson!

Episode 713 – Love Actually

Andrew, Steve, Chris, and Eric wander onto unholy ground and come into contact with the worst film of 2003, a mélange of last-chance romances, heartbreaks, and creepy-ass stalker-shit that occurs in London right on the verge of Christmas Day, a year or 2 after 9/11 happened! Why are people so in love with this thing? If you were Liam Neeson, wouldn’t you just slowly poison this kid? If you were Keira Knightley, wouldn’t you put out protective orders against Andrew Lincoln? Why is anyone calling that woman chubby? If a movie like this is never made again, we’ve done our job.

Episode 714 – Fred Claus 

To close out 2023, the boys head to the North Pole to help Paul Giamatti’s Santa and his asshole brother, Fred save Christmas and fend off an evil efficiency expert, played by noted normal person Kevin Spacey. Are they all immortal or not? Why make that confusing? Why does any of this take place in Chicago? Who the fuck does the Spacey character actually work for? We survived the Vince Vaughn: Leading Man era by the skin of our teeth, folks.

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'tpornography.

Andrew So, this December, I decided to get into the holiday spirit the best way one can: watching the entirety of the Criterion Collection’s Godzilla box set! Don’t get me wrong, I also watched a metric fuck-ton of holiday stuff, including a wealth of Rankin and Bass productions, but all the kaiju mania was a fun change-up for the month. I also have a real problem with buying huge box sets and never, ever touching them, so this was a major accomplishment for me. I watched all 15 features, as well as the “Americanized” Godzilla, King of the Monsters and the Japanese language cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla, which is for some reason ditched onto the supplemental disc while the inferior English dub gets the main disc placement. Anyway, these are the highlights:

Godzilla (1954):  The OG is of course at the top of the pile. The best and only place to start.

Mothra vs. Godzilla(1964): Love that little Mothra flying around, and there’s also a hilarious moment in this where Godzilla gets his tail stuck in some scaffolding and he trips and falls. Incredible.

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964): Aliens brought into the saga in this one. Almost too many monsters in this, forcing Godzilla to take a bit of a back seat.

Invasion of the Astro-Monster (1965): This one has real-deal Twilight Zone vibes and that makes for a more fun watch. Ancient aliens trying to make deals with humans. Super campy and fun!

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep(1966): This might be one of the most bonk of this entire franchise. Tons of twangy surf guitar since it’s the theme song for the giant crab monster, Ebirah! Wild, wild stuff.

Godzilla vs. Gigan(1972): Gigan makes for a wild-ass monster with all his huge buzzsaws and what not. Giant, alien bugs disguised as humans are the villains. Godzilla also parodies the classic Bond-shooting-the-camera opening at the beginning.

Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) - A little kid gets Robert De Niro-kicked, a scientist builds a gigantic robot that helps fight alongside Godzilla, and the film has an amazing, groovy, jazz flute score. Incredible stuff.

Chris:  OOPS, All New Releases –

All of Us Strangers: Sensitively written, well-performed, and tediously directed. Par for the course for post-Weekend Andrew Haigh, though there are some moments that suggest he is moving beyond recycling the same damn questions in the do-you-really-know-anyone canon, which is indeed promising.

Jawan/Jigarthanda DoubleX/Rocky and Rani’s Love Story: Perhaps I should have known better than to believe that the runaway success of RRR would lead to a newfound, unquenchable thirst for major releases from Bollywood and Taliwood for young and popular cinephiles worldwide. If that had come to pass, I imagine I would have heard a lot more about these three immensely entertaining blockbusters. To be fair, there does seem to be a solid following for Jawan, thanks largely to it being an SRK joint, but if anything, the other two – an unrelenting action epic about cinema’s power to change people and the best romantic comedy to be released this decade, respectively – are the far stronger and ambitious films. No smoke to Jawan though, which is ten times the film that Pathaan, the other big SRK hit, is. Check them out, they are all available to stream on Netflix and Amazon.

Leave the World Behind: The Obamas and the Mr. Robot guy try to make a Jordan Peele movie and to say that they fail in their goals would not even begin to cover it. Avoid.

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire : Takes two hours to assemble the team, leaving 30 minutes to start and finish the actual story. A genuinely remarkable amount of rape threats. You could get dizzy pointing out all the other blockbusters that Snyder is lifting directly from here, but primarily feels like a bootleg Warhammer adaptation. Stuff is always happening while the core of the film remains inert. I’m sure I’ll think it’s a masterpiece after I see three other versions of this film and five versions of Part 2.

American Fiction:This movie would’ve sucked back in 2013 too, but at least its concerns would have felt a bit more immediate and not well-trod to the point of irrelevancy. Some good performances, but not enough to excuse being nearly two hours long.

The Color Purple: An exuberant trainwreck of tones with plenty of great performances and some memorable images and ideas from Burial of Kojo director Blitz Bazawule. I am perhaps just beaming from seeing such a purposeful nod to Daughters of the Dust on the big screen, but this mostly worked for me.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: Lacks the organic urgency and care for characters big and small, evil and good that made the original such a major standout in early-aughts animation. The fervent desire for liberation and purpose in the chickens is replaced with bland, repetitive odes to parental protectiveness and lessons on how dangerous teenage curiosity can be. A major disappointment, all the more so because of the insane level of physical artistry on display by the animators and filmmakers.

Eric: It's the Holiday Season, so I'll just shoot these off fast - saw a lot lately.

Ferrari: Loved it.

Rebel Moon: Hated it.

Super Mario Bros Movie: Had me at first but then bored me.

Blast of Silence: Holiday classic and really cool to revisit in the wake of The Killer.

Gran Turismo: Did not care for this. A lot of "Why doesn't dumb old fuck Dad understand that me using PlayStation is good, actually?"

Come Drink with Me: Outstanding, beautiful, see it.

Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special: Blown away by how fun this was. Make it a tradition.

Black Christmas (2006):Glad to see I was right, this is a fun and serviceable holiday horror but yes, it's nowhere near as good as the original.

The Silent Partner: Loved this '70s Elliott Gould vs Christopher Plummer movie. It was my first time and it's just really good.

Elves: Disappointed in everyone who told me to watch this non-movie. Good concept, I guess!

Silent Night(2023):  John Woo, what you doin’, baby girl? Just doesn't come together which should've been paint by numbers.

Jack Reacher: This movie is cornball as fuck but it has great action scenes and Werner Herzog.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back:  How do you fuck that up? Cobie Smulders turns in her audition tape to never work again. Stick with being number 32 on a Marvel call sheet. The movie is just bad, I'm not trying to be mean to her, but there's really nothing here.

Jack Reacher: The TV Show: I dug Season 1. Not feeling Season 2 so far. I like this approach better though, instead of a 5'2 Tom Cruise we get a serious question with: What if Jason Voorhees was Sherlock Holmes?

Steve: I am catching up and NEARLY ready to make a Top 10 list for the year! Good news, NOBODY CARES! Here’s some stuff I caught this last month:

Ferrari: I’m fooling around and thinking this might be Adam Driver’s best performance? It feels that way. Which is unfortunate because he’s not gonna top Cillian Murphy or Big Bad Paul Giamatti for being my favorite male performance of the year, but it just goes to show how fucking stacked this year is with good movies and performances. This movie is absolutely gorgeous from the first frame, I’m so glad Michael Mann is out of his “grunge” phase (cue Audioslave), because the colors are so vibrant on these fast-moving death machines they make a non-car guy like me go “wow” Also, holy shit does Penélope Cruz just annihilate in this film. Her best work, easily.

Saltburn: Woof. I consider myself a “liker” of the film Promising Young Woman, which had some interesting themes and some not so interesting themes, but was strongly directed and bitterly funny, so even though I wasn’t 100% behind her last work, I was looking forward to whatever Emerald Fennel did next. COLOR ME WRONG. Saltburn, is pompous, humorless, overly stylized, with some raunchy sex scenes scattered throughout to keep you from falling asleep. It’s all very surface level without anything interesting to say and totally without any reason you’d want to spend a minute in Saltburn if you didn’t have to. (psst, go to my Letterboxd for a spoilery review that reveals my biggest LOL of the year).

Maestro: I really liked this one. Not my favorite of the year, but I think Cooper gives a really committed and endearing performance and he plays wonderfully with Carey Mulligan, while staging some really nice musical set-pieces. It’s a strong movie to watch with your mom if she’s looking for something and you need to kill two hours.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from

Danielle, from Florida who asks: “What actor/director pairing would you like to see that hasn't happened yet?”

Andrew:  I’d love to see our dear friend, Stephen Tobolowsky cast in a David Fincher motion picture. Tobo, as we all know, is a fantastic actor who had delivered so many memorable performances in so many films for decades. But the guy deserves an elevated role, something juicy, and I think a big supporting role in a Fincher film would rock. Love you, Tobo!

Chris: Too many to count, but here are some that pop into mind:

Bradley Cooper & Paul Schrader – Having just seen Maestro, I am more convinced than ever than someone needs to beat the shit out of Bradley Cooper. Figuratively, of course. The guy forgot how to have guts, which is what happens when you spend too long away from Clint Eastwood. A man-in-the-room film that forces him to deal with a genuinely tough character that he can’t cut into a double of his own primed greatness is exactly what he needs.

Leonardo DiCaprio & John Waters – DiCaprio is very clearly a pervert and I would like a director to at least attempt to coax out that side of him in some way. I say, bring in the expert, and if he is not available, I hear Todd Solondz is back at it and would do just fine.

Chris Pratt & Tyler Perry – I have my reasons. They both seem very high-strung.

Scarlett Johansson & Kelly Reichardt – This could either put Johansson in a more grounded, earthy world, which I have long wished she would explore more, or force Reichardt to reckon with fame and glory after often making films about people who are, at most, local legends. Just please keep Johansson away from franchises for a while.

Eric: I'm going batshit here but I'll say William Shatner and Quentin Tarantino. I'll come up with another in case Old Bill passes before this is published. Brad Pitt and David Lynch. I think they both zero in on Americana and it'd mean Lynch can get his movie seen by the dullards of the world. And they'd be all confounded.

Steve: Really fun question! Off the top of my head I would say:

Oscar Isaac and Martin Scorsese: Isaac has it in him to play a tortured, complicated Scorsese lead and I’d love to see it. Tick tock, Marty!

Carey Mulligan and Good Tim Burton: She’d make a prime over the top inspiration for Timmy boy, but it has to be somehow made before 1998.

Adam Driver and Wes Anderson: This would be one of the last notches Driver would need on his BIG DIRECTOR’S checklist and I’m here for it, I think his comedic work is always a joy to watch and he’d look good in a Paisley suit and clear glasses or whatever.

Lupita Nyong’o and Guillermo del Toro: I love when Lupita is allowed to go big and off the rails like she did in Us, so yeah, I’d love to watch her get mashed into GDT’s madness machine.

JANUARY SCHEDULE
 

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

Episode 715 – Hypnotic

Episode 716 – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Episode 717– The Family Plan

Episode 718 – Expend4bles

Episode 719 – Saw X

Patreon Episodes:

We Love Movies – Oppenheimer

Animation Damnation: Agent Elvis: “Full Tilt” (s1, e1)

The Nexus: TOS: “The Way to Eden” (s3, 20), TNG: “Remember Me” (s4, e5)

Gleep Glossary: Lady Valerian

MelR0210: 90210“Song of Myself” (s3, e7), Melrose Place: “With this Ball and Chain” (s2, e22)

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 unsubscribing 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

On Screen Live continues to kick ass apace each and every Monday at Noon (mostly)! We’re off for a few weeks, but we’ve got a killer back catalog and will be returning on January 22nd (mark your calendars!)  Check it out on our YouTube Channel! We also just dropped another LIVE video Mailbag that you don’t want to miss out on.

We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like WTF Exorcism with Marc Merrin,Dr. Loomis is the Worst Doctor, Dilf Den, George Bailey as Michael Meyers, John Wick-Mentary,  Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David! Muppet Hitchcock Presents, and many more! You can also watchthe 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 Rampage (2018), Any Which Way You Can, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Saw III. 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!

In a true Christmas Miracle, Eric and Ben are back in the the blue and are talking about Turtle Races (?!), Pseudo Doctor Ruth Radio shows and WOMEN KILLERS, when they review “The Surrogate” 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! We have some hot off the presses designs by Felipe Sobreiro and some, like the above, might not be around forever (wink wink)!  We also have "The DILF Den", and a "Crispy Critters" design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill!  There’s a ton of other 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! See you next month!  

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