Jack Falvey makes a long awaited return to the BingeCast with Chad C and Law to help review a whole lot of television and movies. This includes things like Shazam, Pet Sematary, Long Shot, Late Night, The Twilight Zone, What We do In the Shadows, Barry, Brockmire, Happy, Star Trek Discovery, and much more. Also, Chad C just returned from CinemaCon (Bragging Camp) and dishes all the details about the footage he saw and the drinks he had with Black Panther.
This week we’re tackling Martin Scorsese’s classic Taxi Driver.
Join us as we discuss and break down all the details from this classic 1976 film. The boys discuss the major themes, references to the film and some of the eccentricities of Robert De Niro’s performance. Also, is it weird to anyone else that David Krumholtz is basically a dead ringer for 70’s era Scorsese? Just us? Fair enough.
All this and more, so download now!
And so that you can watch along with us, next time on Movie Homework:
Strap in and get ready with the relaunch of Binge Media’s Movie Homework!
This week we’re taking a look at Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
The boys discuss everything about the movie from breaking down the plot piece by piece to their favorite, and least favorite (Eli Roth), aspects of the film. What makes Basterds stick as an enduring piece of cinema and can movies really change the world? All this and more, so download now!
And so that you can watch along with us, next time on Movie Homework:
Released in the summer of 1988, it didn’t take long for 20th Century Fox to realize that Die Hard was a hit, and almost immediately started putting together a sequel concept. However, this time their film wasn’t going to be based on anything by original novelist Roderick Thorpe. Instead, Fox already had the rights to the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager, and in a move that will be a theme to this series, just plugged almost all of our favorite characters from the original Die Hard film and made it the sequel lazily known as Die Harder.
But Hans Gruber isn’t the only piece of the 1988 film’s puzzle missing from this film. There is no sly hand of original director John McTiernan at the helm. Instead, we get the upstart, high on his action game Finnish director Renny Harlin at the helm. Join Ammon, Batch, and myself as we dissect whether the sequel’s outlandishly ridiculous concept is able to be overshadowed by the hard nosed action Die Hard 2: Die Harder contains. And whether the still full toupee wearing Bruce Willis brings his A game to another adventure containing John McClane being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Download the podcast that I like to call, Christmas in June. And don’t forget, we will be going down this road of one film a week until we get to the 2013 fifth film A Good Day to Die Hard.
Oddly enough, I came to the realization this past week that the first Fast & Furious (or the first remake…or whatever…) was my first DVD purchase ever. While I’ve got a certain affinity for the cheesy bullshit of the first, I was never into the sequels until Fast Five which totally went balls out and got us where we are in the franchise today. I had a FUCKING blast with this movie and I think anyone with a pulse and the ability to shut their brain off for a couple of hours will be into this as well. I look at this franchise as the model version of what Stallone attempted with the shitty Expendables flicks (yes, all three are bullshit and underwhelming). I can’t think of another franchise where I would be able to buy the whole car-skydiving bullshit, but with these guys it works. Major props to the filmmakers for giving me a solid Rock-Bottom to kick the movie off and for doing right by Paul Walker and his family. I was never a Paul Walker fan, and honestly I’ve never seen him as a great actor, but the guy was a big part of this franchise and did it well enough that he will be missed in future installments (oh which there will most likely be many). 8/10 all day.
After Moreno’s Monday Morning Moreno from last week, which you can listen to here, I got myself back on the documentary bandwagon just in time for Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. What a great documentary. I’ve had tertiary knowledge of Scientology but this is truly one of the most insane things I’ve ever heard of (this coming from someone who believes a man dresses up as a bat and fights crime somewhere in America). What really boggled my mind was just how calculated the entire process was, and I can totally understand the brainwashing of its members by church leaders to think their particular way. I can’t imagine this documentary will do anything to slow the church down, but it’s insulting to me as a taxpayer that these people can essentially claim a shitty version of Battlestar Galactica is a religion and not pay taxes on anything. While this documentary does break my rule that all great documentaries don’t use a narrator, it’s such compelling content that it needs to be viewed by any and all who will watch it. A strong 8/10 for this as well.
For those of you who listened to last week’s Binge Game Cast, found here, you heard I was building a rig for the first time. Well, it’s finished, and I’m pretty happy with it thus far. I managed to get a copy of Shadow of Mordor and it looks stunning on the machine. I’m still learning the ins and outs of overclocking and enhancing the machine past my base level 3.3Ghz i5 and the 16GB of memory I stuck in there, but it’s a very satisfying project to complete for anyone who is thinking about doing it. Years ago I had a custom PC built, but I really just ordered what the kid told me to and he put it together. This was truly my project, from the researching of the pieces to my ultimate choices of gear and it’s great to be done for now (at least until I convince myself to get a bigger video card).
Finally, we have Hotline Miami. Holy FUCK is this game awesome. I’ve been growing bored with the onslaught/resurgence of 8-bit games over the past few years as some schticky sort of callback to the types of games we’ve advanced way past at this point in the technology. I’m happy to report not only is Hotline Miami fun it is, dare I say, original. In Miami, you play as a goon running through boards at lightning speeds murdering the Russian mob while you may/may not be on some sort of hallucinogens. You wear different animal masks that give you different, and in my opinion mostly unnecessary, power-ups. That alone would make the game pretty out there, but add the thumping techno/electronic soundtrack and the 80’s setting and you get what is the most addictive game I’ve played in a long time. It’s actually the perfect counter-point to Bloodborne for me, because as soon as I get stuck in Bloodborne (FUCKING FORBIDDEN WOODS FUCK YOU SNAKES) I can always jump into this and feel some sort of accomplishment. Because the game runs on such low specs I would assume almost anyone can load it up through Steam and get a couple rounds in, so I encourage all of you to do that.
Keep an eye out for the finale (!) of Better Call Saul and our commentary for it as well as your Hottie Draft points, and, as always, Binge On!