The Peacemaker (1997)
ADHD-DVD
This week, we continue to collect members of the Ocean's gang like Infinity Stones, as we find Danny playing a convincing soldier and compelling leading man in a 90s geo-political thriller that feels like a total forgotbuster, despite starring two massive movie stars and launching DreamWorks as a studio. It's 1997's The Peacemaker, directed by Mimi Leder, and starring George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Marcel Iureș, Aleksandr Baluev, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Holt McCallany, Goran Višnjić, and Michael Boatman. One of the Cloondog's early jumps from ER star to silverscreen leading man, this movie is...
info_outline
The Fugitive
ADHD-DVD
This week, look, we know you don't care, but we didn't kill our wife, okay?? We're heading out on the run with a hairy Harrison in search of the one-armed man, as we have a hell of a time with one the great dad thrillers of the 90s. It's 1993's The Fugitive, directed by Andrew Davis, and starring Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Jeroen Krabbé, Daniel Roebuck, L. Scott Caldwell, Tom Wood, Andreas Katsulas, Julianne Moore and Jane Lynch. Both a perpetual chase action movie as well as a taut conspiracy thriller, the movie is boosted enormously by a lineup of U.S....
info_outline
Mr. 3000
ADHD-DVD
As J Mo rapidly approaches (or has perhaps already passed?) 3000 films watched all-time on Letterboxd, it felt fitting to kick off a new year with the story of another man who thought he'd hit the 3000 plateau only for it to be taken away from him on a technicality, as we try to whip ourselves back in to game-shape for 2025 by watching a sports comedy that's a little too light on laughs. It's 2004's Mr. 3000, directed by Charles Stone III, and starring Bernie Mac, Angela Bassett, Michael Rispoli, Dondré Whitfield, Paul Sorvino, Chris Noth, Keegan-Michael Key, Dane Cook and Tom Arnold. While...
info_outline
Blow Out
ADHD-DVD
For one last time in 2024, we're closing out DePalmber: Part De by opening the vault door and welcoming another of our beloved classics into the podcast canon, this time a bleak noir thriller about a foley artist in the film industry who winds up recording proof of a political murder conspiracy while out grabbing sounds for a new low-end horror picture, and gets swept up into a dark world of intrigue where no one is safe. It's 1981's Blow Out, written and directed by Brian De Palma and starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, Jon Lithgow, Dennis Franz, Peter Boyden, John Aquino and Deborah...
info_outline
Blue Chips
ADHD-DVD
MERRY SHAQMAS, EVERYONE! We hit pause on DePalmber: Part De this week and pick up our annual Christmas tradition of exploring the filmography of basketball player / actor Shaquille O'Neal, here making his acting debut in a Nick Nolte-helmed character drama loosely based on notorious college coach Bobby Knight. It's 1994's Blue Chips, directed by William Friedkin, and starring Nolte, Shaq, Mary McDonnell, Ed O'Neill, J.T. Walsh, Alfre Woodard, Penny Hardaway, Anthony C. Hall and Bobby Knight. This was Friedkin's return to the fold after 20 years of banishment at Paramount, following a serious...
info_outline
Body Double
ADHD-DVD
This week we're auditioning for the role of a lifetime as DePALMBER: PART DE continues with another example of what feels like well-worn territory for our man of the month: an erotic thriller in which a working class man in show business is forced to be an unlikely hero as he becomes entangled in a murder. It's 1984's Body Double, directed, produced, and co-written from a story by Brian De Palma, and starring Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton, Guy Boyd and Dennis Franz. As De Palma's immediate follow-up to Scarface, it's a brazenly bizarre swing on what was surely a...
info_outline
The Untouchables
ADHD-DVD
It's the final month of year, which means it's time again to celebrate the reason for the season and make it another DePalmber to ReMalmber as we fire up another Brian De Palma series, DePALMBER: PART DE, with 1987's The Untouchables, directed by De Palma, written by David Mamet, and starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, Charles Martin Smith, Robert De Niro, Billy Drago and Patricia Clarkson. A 1930s Chicago gangland drama about the prohibition war on Al Capone, it's a quintessential Dad Movie that found second life as a classic video store rental in the decade-plus after its...
info_outline
No Country For Old Men
ADHD-DVD
This week, we're fixin' to do somethin' dumber than hell but we're gonna do it anyway, as we close out No-Theme-ber by circling back to the coin-flip best movie of 2007, a gravely serious and barbed-wire-taut neo-western crime thriller that the Coens still manage to sneak an enormous amount of low-key goofy comedy into. It's 2007's No Country For Old Men, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the book by Cormac McCarthy, and starring Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Garrett Dillahunt, Tess Harper, Barry Corbin, Beth Grant and...
info_outline
Gladiator
ADHD-DVD
This week, as Gladiator II hits the theaters to repeat the same beats of its predecessor and prove that what we do in life truly does echo in eternity, we circle back to the original to cross a movie off of Hayley's list and get her hyped to see some hunks on the IMAX screen. It's 2000's Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, Tommy Flanagan and Spencer Treat Clark. A somewhat controversial Best Picture winner at the time, it has remained one of Scott's most celebrated pictures...
info_outline
Legally Blonde
ADHD-DVD
This week, we're headed to Harvard Law (what, like it's hard?) as J Mo cashes in a recent thrift store pick-up so we'd have something light and breezy to discuss in the wake of recent events. It's 2001's Legally Blonde, directed by Robert Luketic, and starring Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber, Holland Taylor, Jennifer Coolidge, Ali Larter, Osgood Perkins, Raquel Welch and Linda Cardellini. A box office hit that spawned a sequel, a broadway musical (with accompanying talent search reality show), and apparently a forthcoming prequel TV series, and...
info_outlineThis week, P.T.August continues with P.T.A.'s most recent output, and for the second time this year we're joined once again by the people's champion Matt Pollock to talk about a movie he has been smitten with since its COVID-era theatrical release: it's 2021's Licorice Pizza, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and starring Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie, Skyler Gisondo, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Harriet Sansom Harris, and the entire Haim family. A collection of mostly true stories from 1970s L.A. embued with the golden glow of Anderson's own That One Summer childhood nostalgia, its led by two extremely winning performances from a pair of actors both making their big screen debuts. While not without its controversies, it's a dreamlike hazy hangout movie we all loved quite a lot.
If you'd like to watch the film before listening along to our discussion, Licorice Pizza is currently streaming in Canada on Crave and across the globe on the Criterion Channel at the time of publication.
Other works referenced in this episode include Twisters, Targets, Scanners, Kim's Video, Michael Clayton, Saturday Night, The Ladies Man, Coneheads, It's Pat, Rebel Ridge, Hold The Dark, Green Room, Blue Ruin, Clueless, Dazed and Confused, Wild Wild West, An Evening With Kevin Smith, A Star Is Born, Maestro, Warrior, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, The Curse, Good Time, Coffee and Cigarettes, Down By Law, Rumble Fish, The Outsiders, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Mystery Men, Domino, Seven Psychopaths, Special When Lit, Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood..., among countless others.
We'll be back next week with more P.T.August as Travis Woloshyn joins the two-timer club, returning to talk another fumblingly comic detective noir as we watch Joaquin Phoenix and Katherine Waterston in 2014's Inherent Vice! Which is shockingly not currently streaming, at least not in Canada, so... good luck. Try the library! Until then, we'll see you at the movies!!