BIG DADDY DISPATCH, FEBRUARY 2024 (Patreon)

Dispatch Eighty Three January 31, 2024

Greetings WHM Family!

After four long weeks we’ve done it, we’ve done talked about all of the WORST of 2023…Oh, wait, no we haven’t! Actually, we have been saving the worst for last, because this Thursday at 9pm/est we are doing a LIVE Show with on last year’s “why in the hell did they release this” classic superhero romp, The Flash! Come watch us tear through this abomination with lightning speed and maximum confusion. Like, who in the WORLD thought it was a good idea to have extra Ezra Millers? One wasn’t bad enough??? Also, if you’re smart and cool, you’ll purchase tix to the swanky afterparty, wherein we answer listener questions and hang for another hour shooting the shit in our own inimitable style! The afterparties are a BLAST.

If you can’t make the show this TOMORROW at 9pm/est, don’t worry, it’s rebroadcasted for an entire WEEK afterwards. Get your tickets here!!

Aaaand that’s just the beginning! Scroll down to see some new tour dates, the return of some fan favorite guests, and of course a packed February schedule that will knock you on your ass!

Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

Image Credit: We Hate Movies The Flash Live Show Art by Felipe Sobreiro

WE’RE HITTING THE ROAD AGAIN!

That’s right folks, if that virtual live show doesn’t strike your fancy and you need to see us in the pale and pasty flesh, get your buns to one of the following cities at the appropriate time! Just an FYI, we will be announcing them this coming Monday at 12pm/est on next week’s installment of On-Screen Live!

The Shows are:

Thursday, 4/25 we will be in Atlanta, Georgia at the City Winery! Get Tix here!

Tuesday, 5/14 we will be going to Houston, Texas for the first time to do a show at the Houston Improv! Get Tix Here!

Wednesday, 5/15 we’ll be finishing this leg of our 2024 tour by returning to one of our favorite cities, Austin, Texas at Cap City Comedy! Get Tix Here!

You do not want to miss these shows, so get your tickets now!

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 715 – Hypnotic 

The boys kick off 2024 by heading into fake-Chris Nolan land with poor Ben Affleck to find his missing daughter and stop mind-criminal William Fichtner and his legions of mind-controlled nobodies. What the fuck, Robert Rodriguez directed this? Why? Is he yet another victim of medical debt? What is the current status of the lawsuit Nolan has against this film for being a no-good, dirty copycat? Can we not do better for our greats like Fichtner, Jeff Fahey, and, yeah sure, Jackie Earle Haley? An inexplicable start to the Worst of 2023.

Episode 716 –Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quanumania 

The gang shrink down to the size of a dust-mite’s ass hair to help a sitcom family of superheroes fight the once and definitely not future Kang as he prepares to wreak havoc on a new generation of Avengers that everyone definitely wants and is very interested in. No, seriously, what the fuck is the MCU going to do after this year? Why can’t they actually give Wasp something to do? How have they even squandered the bottomless pool of charm that is Paul Rudd? Peyton Reed, my beautiful boy, you deserve better.

Episode 717 – Oppenheimer (Patrons Only)

For this month’s We Love Movies episode, the fellas head out to Los Alamos to help the world’s greatest wife-fucker (and father of the atomic bomb) with a big project. How many times has Eric seen this movie? Has there ever been a cast this stacked of 90s and aughts character actors? Do we have a count of how many colleagues Oppie made unwilling cuckolds of? Never trust the student who brings you an apple.

Episode 718 – The Family Plan

Oh, hey, bro! Andrew, Eric, Chris and Steve hit the road with Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Monaghan and their excessively normal family as it is revealed that Wahlberg’s paterfamilias is actually a former super-spy. How does the baby survive the supermarket fight scene? Is there a tiktok trend of young men taking pictures of couples kissing and laughing at them? Have you ever wondered if an iPhone would make your life better and your family happy and appreciative? We have an offer to share with you.

Episode 719 – Expend4bles 

Them W3 H4te Movie5 boys are going out on one last mission with Sly Stallone (a little), Jason Statham (a lot), and their ragtag gang of musclebound murderers for hire who are no longer able to form and express sentences coherently due to, er, worksite accidents. Is this one of the worst edited films of the decade? Are they just going to hand this franchise over to Statham entirely? (As it turns out, yes!) Can any audience member have an imagination wide enough to accept that a young woman is attracted to Randy Couture? Definitely the second-best movie to use 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” in 2023.

Episode 720– Saw X 

With Steve off at Doctor Nick Riviera’s Engineering School Professionale, Andrew, Chris, and Eric take a trip to Mexico with old friend John Kramer, a.k.a. Jigsaw, to get scammed, slaughter a few con artists, and get mildly xenophobic. Are we supposed to like John Kramer? Does this film create an alternate Sawdimension? Is this the best-looking Saw movie to date? When can we admit that John Kramer, outside of engineering, is kind of a moron? We’re never getting rid of this franchise, are we?

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:  Kind of a real grab bag for me this month. I’m about to start watching a bunch of Sundance stuff in a few, but we hit Big Daddy Dispatch deadlines around here, goddammit! I’ll get to Sundance stuff on OSL, but for now, I’ll have to report on what I’ve already watched. 

Here we go:

Paper Moon(1973): This had always been a big blind spot for me and when Ryan checked out, I figured it’d come up sooner than later. My wife really likes it and in the near 20 years we’ve been together, she’s been recommending we watch it. I gotta say, solid movie. I love a good story about scamps and this film scratches that itch big time.

The Day After Trinity (1981): Yeah, my Oppie Fever has officially spread to Chelsea. We sat down with the 4K a couple weeks ago and she really liked it, and later that night, after my 4th viewing and with Oppie still on the brain, I rented this and was totally knocked out. Watching some of the folks interviewed here, like Chevalier (still in exile!) is really wild. Big recommend for all the Oppie-heads out there.

Saltburn (2023):  Yeah, fuck all the way off with this. Looks great, Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike are fabulous and should’ve had their own movie, but yeah, not really much else here at all. Also, Superbad wasn’t being broadcast on television when this takes place. How do you fuck that up? Just take a cursory glance at IMDb before you commit that to film.

A Murder at the End of the World (2023):  I’m pretty surprised I didn’t hear a soul talking about this last year. Really fun and weird sci-fi/murder mystery mash-up courtesy of the folks that brought us Sound of My Voice and The OA. You’ve got really solid performances from Clive Owen, Brit Marling, Harris Dickinson, and Emma Corrin in the lead. It’s on Hulu here in the States. Would recommend!

Echo (2024): Brutally violent, great fight choreography, the magnificent return of D’Onofrio as Kingpin, and a really compelling lead in Alaqua Cox. There’s also a really sweet thread between Tantoo Cardinal and Graham Greene that would be right at home in some critically acclaimed Sundance indie or something, but also works really nicely here. Oh, and REAL LOCATIONS FOR FILMING YOUR COMIC BOOK SHOW! Holy cow, the majesty of watching a shot where a real pick-up truck pulls up to a real house. Refreshing stuff.

Little Odessa(1994): I checked this out on Criterion Channel’s “James Gray’s New York” and wow, what a feature debut! I don’t think it’s perfect, but it’s really impressive and clearly Gray, a director I really like, was charting his course from the jump. Tim Roth is pretty terrifying in this and it’s far and away the best performance Eddie Furlong has ever turned in. Tim Roth’s comically oversized leather jacket crunching all over the soundtrack is wild.

Chris:  In 2023, I started the year by seeking out as many movies directed by Allan Dwan as were available that sounded good or were well-regarded by writers I trust. This year, I went with Raoul Walsh, who is no-doubt best known for his collaborations with James Cagney (White Heat, The Roaring Twenties, The Strawberry Blonde) and Humphrey Bogart (High Sierra, They Drive By Night, The Enforcer - under a friend’s name). I have Eric to thank for initially turning me onto Walsh, when he recommended watching Gentleman Jim, an exceptional, brawny boxing picture starring Errol Flynn, to me when we were still living together in Queens. Here are some highlights as of late:

Objective, Burma!:  You’ll have to excuse the, er, aggressive anti-Japanese tone of the film – woke the dog with the noise I made while reading the ending scroll that essentially calls for the eradication of Japan. If you can swallow that, what remains is a blistering condemnation of war nestled within an extraordinary war film, depicting the military as unreliable with mortal consequences and ultimately uncaring for the men that the top brass exploits happily. Like Ford, Siegel, and Eastwood, there’s a thrilling ideological friction to Walsh’s worldview that can come off as hypocrisy in his weaker films or by simplistic, passive readings. Here, the director and his cast vent a lifetime of sadness and fury at a world run by the one who can cause the most death.

Distant Drums: Much like Burma’s view of the Japanese, I cannot vouch for the depiction of Native Americans – specifically the Seminole people of Florida – in this lurid, wild-grown western, with Gary Cooper leading a ragtag group of criminals and soldiers through the Everglades, leading to an inevitable confrontation with Seminole Chief Ocala in the raging climax. This was one of Walsh’s last film’s for Warner Bros and is easily one of his most distinct and potent works on its technical merits and brilliant use of location. There’s an organic tanginess to the images, and Walsh keeps the action tense and explosive in appropriate turns. Also, this is the film that birthed the famous Wilhelm scream, but is worth seeing for much more than that.

The World in His Arms: One of the best adventure films I’ve seen in a long time. There was some argument about Gregory Peck being a mediocre actor on social media a few weeks ago and if the other four dozen movies where he owns are not available for the defense, this will do quite nicely. The one thing Peck always risks is coming off too above-it or even snobby, and he has often leaned into that elemental part of his delivery and stardom as an act of criticizing that kind of performance of personality. Here, he clearly relishes playing a bolder, thrill-hungry character who controls uncontrollable men and is better at fighting random men than being a consistent romancer. Terrific stuff.

Saskatchewan: The best and only Canadian Western I’ve seen this decade (and maybe ever?), and my favorite collaboration between Walsh and Shane star Alan Ladd, who also paired with the director in the middling gambling drama Salty O’Rourke. Handsomely shot, exciting, and swiftly paced, which are crucial elements for any Western made with modest ambitions.

Eric: Here's some random stuff I've been watching.

Tenet:  I still kinda feel the same way about this movie I did back in 2020, it's fine! I liked it slightly more this go because, talk shit all you want, that thing is an ass magnet. I was compelled start to finish, although I feel like it kinda gets dull during the temporal pincer. Also, I couldn't believe it when they just started talking about Oppenheimer in this. Don't remind me of a better movie!

The Kiss (1988):  This movie is unsettlingly strange. There's a sinister shot of a pool filter running. A lot of just weird elements and some get left alone never to come back up. The gist is that Felice (Joanna Pacula) is a supernatural being (you know, due to that visit to the Belgian Congo and all)  that visits her dead sister's husband to seduce him in order to get to his daughter, Amy (Meredith Salenger), because if she makes out with her with a demon tongue, she can get immortality or something. One of the weirder movies set in Albany, NY.

The Equalizer 1-3: I took the Gun Denzel voyage and it's... fine. The first movie is the only one that I think is worth your time. These are all action movies that suddenly go "Wait, wait a second, I need to sit down." And you feel that sit down time.

My Date with Drew: A psycho - stalker tries to get a date with Drew Barrymore. More thoughts on this in our Once in a Lifetime episode this month on The Walls Are Watching. Get hip to the Walsh Tier, folks!

Shamus (1973):  This is a Burt Reynolds private detective movie that opens with a couple in bed immediately getting murdered by a flamethrower directly after the opening Columbia Pictures logo. Then the other huge crazy thing in this movie is when Burt adds club soda to his scrambled eggs. It's a recommend over here.

Hard Time 1-3:  These are TNT original movies from the late 90's that Burt Reynolds did right after Boogie Nights. He directs the first one. His partner (yes they're cops, of course) is Charles Durning who gets up to fat guy antics like wearing Hawaiian shirts and declaring there's no better combination than "beer AND whiskey!" In the second movie, Burt goes to jail and has to deal with Bruce Dern doing a Hannibal Lecter-like role. Truly bizarre TV movies. The first is the best. The second one is worth it for Dern and shockingly the third, directed by the great Hal Needham, is a really bad Die Hard knockoff that has zero money to do anything interesting. The first movie also sports Billy Dee Williams, Robert Loggia, Mia Sara, AND Roddy Piper.

Saltburn (2023) - Don't get what all the fuss is about here. Not really a fan of this but appreciated my restraint for not googling "Barry Keoghan penis" and instead watching it within its proper context.

Steve:I wound up spending most of this month recovering from a minor surgery, so I’ve been watching a LOT of movies, mostly older stuff that I wanted to revisit, like…

Mystic River: Haven’t seen this guy in forever and it holds up as probably the last Clint Eastwood movie I truly loved. It’s the cast that takes it over the top, and everybody knows exactly their role and how to maximize their screentime. You have Laura Linney cooling her heels the entire movie until her unhinged final speech. And she’s like 6th billed or something! Outrageous.

Eastern Promises: Oh, fuck yeah! Expect to see this on the WLM feed sometime in the future, because this is just a pitch-black gangster flick that meets the Cronenbergian quota for festering open wounds, dreary locales, and the questioning of self. It’s my favorite Viggo performance by a considerable margin and it’s not just because I get to see his glorious taint. Not just because…

X-Men: Days of Future Past: All indications are that Bryan Singer is an absolute piece of shit. I’ll be the first to agree to that, and I’m glad he’s been unceremoniously shuffled out of Hollywood so badly that Dexter Fletcher had to finish his awful Queen movie. All that said, that piece of shit really did know how to make an X-Men movie. It’s mostly the cast that buoys these films, led by an absolutely iconic Hugh Jackman and TWO pairs of excellently cast Magnetos and Professor Xs. They fell off significantly after this one (I still think both Apocalypseand Dark Phoenix are watchable) but this movie did an admirable job of bridging the timelines and making good use of the last time Jennifer Lawrence gave a shit about Mystique. She’s excellent here, and the movie smartly puts her as the moral fulcrum. There’s a lot to love in front of the camera…behind it, not so much. Such is my plight with these films. Will you ever see this or X2 as a WLM? I’m not so sure.

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

Kevin, from Seattle who asks: “What movie high school do you most wish you had attended?”

Andrew:  It sounds fucked up, but Woodsboro High from Scream would be one movie high school I would’ve liked to have attended. Mainly because I think I could’ve survived Billy and Stu’s rampage and ALSO, that house party looked pretty sweet. I also would’ve definitely enjoyed attending Lee High from Dazed and Confused. Those kids were all having fun and shit man, having regular Moon Tower parties be part of your high school, experience? Hell yeah…

Chris: I’m going to have to go with 10 Things I Hate About You. First of all, the actual school looks huge and cool and absurdly well-funded. If my high school looked like a castle, I might have felt a few more pangs of pride for the old stomping ground. Also, at the time, you could hardly ask for a more attractive student body. I mean, yeah, Julia Stiles, Gabrielle Union, and Heath Ledger were very much teenage Chris’s types, but also it would have been cool to be friends with twenty-something David Krumholtz in high school. That being said, I would have found a real-life JGL in that movie very annoying, so that would be less ideal, but that’s a minor complaint. You take a look at those house parties? Certainly a step up from the high school in O.

Eric: High school is a nightmare and picking any "fun" movie from the 80s probably would've just made my high school experience worse. You see the way James Spader is talking to people in Pretty in Pink? I'd crumble and never recover! So just based on an educational experience alone I'd like to go to the high school in Forks, Washington or wherever the vampires in Twilight went. I think it'd be a real benefit to my education if I were studying say, History, and can turn around to my twinkly friend and just straight up ask if Abe Lincoln was a drunk or enjoyed broccoli. Bonus points to the constant gray sky weather, it means I'd have to keep my nose in those books! If I got to go to Forks High, I'd be a Harvard graduate by now. Instead I went to a barn in Upstate New York and have a podcast.

Steve: I think I’d have to go with the school from Wild Things. I went to an all-boy’s Catholic school and I cannot tell you what a very boring experience that was. I guess if I could do it all over again with a fictional high school, it should be an unreasonably horny high school.

FEBRUARY 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 FEBRUARY!

Episode 721 – Blast from the Past

Episode 722 – Notting Hill

Episode 723– Safe House (1998)

Episode 724 – Leprechaun 3 with James A. Janisse & Chelsea Rebecca

Patreon Episodes:

We Love Movies – Dune (1984)

Animation Damnation: Cathy’s Valentine’s (1989)

The Nexus: TOS: “The Cloud Minders” (s3, 21), TNG: “Legacy” (s4, e6)

Gleep Glossary: Kabe & Muftak

MelR0210: 90210“The Back Story” (s3, e8), Melrose Place: “Otherwise Engaged” (s2, e23)

Once In a Lifetime: The Walls are Watching (2022)

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 pageand 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 are back and better than ever, chatting it up about movie news, reacting live to trailers, and just an FYI…we’ll be playing the VHS Trailer game sometime this month on this very show!  Check it out on our YouTube Channel!.

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!

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!

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