157. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (with Jen Walks N2 Walls)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Release Date: 04/25/2025
Jurassic Park Franchise Rankings + Godzilla (2014)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Hey folks, we're off this week, but we'll be back next week with our Fast Five episode, as the Summer of Rock rolls on! In the meantime, enjoy some samplings from the additional bonus material available on our YouTube channel (). Time stamps: 1:30 — Top-Five Jurassic Park Movies (excluding Jurassic Park) 9:06 — Revisiting Gareth Edwards's Godzilla (2014)
info_outline
164. Tooth Fairy (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Well, a movie finally broke us. Horror and mortal terror have a face. In the absolutely dreadful “family film” Tooth Fairy (2010)—quite possibly the worst movie our podcast has ever covered—Dwayne Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a hockey player who specializes in knocking out opponents’ teeth. He has a lot on his plate: He’s dating Ashley Judd, who has two kids: An adorable little girl who loves him and a punk teenage boy who thinks he’s full of crap (Because he is.). At the same time, Derek has some hotshot new competition in the form of Mick “The Stick”...
info_outline
163. The Rundown (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Dwayne Johnson followed up his debut lead performance in The Scorpion King with The Rundown. Released as Welcome to the Jungle outside America, The Rundown might be his very best movie. Along with Seann William Scott, Rosario Dawson, and a deliciously hammy Christopher Walken, The Rock is firing on all cylinders as both a physical and emotional actor. He can be funny when called to be, but leaves most of the humor to Scott and Walken, and he really shines as a stoic badass. It's no mistake that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a cameo at the beginning of this movie, passing by...
info_outline
162. The Scorpion King (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
The Summer of Rock begins as Laci and Matt dive into the movie career of Dwayne Johnson with his first leading role in The Scorpion King (2002). The Rock first graced the big screen a year earlier in The Mummy Returns, in a brief prologue in which he plays a character who seemingly has nothing to do with the sturdy nice fellow he plays in Scorpion King. And now he gets to lead a picture. And what a picture. An old-fashioned picture, you might say. One refreshingly free of irony, self-awareness, or any of the oppressive trappings of modernity. This movie’s kinda great, actually. And...
info_outline
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
We're off this week, preparing for the Summer of Rock, which starts next week with an episode about The Scorpion King (2002). In fact, here is our schedule for the rest of the month: June 13 - The Scorpion King (2002) June 20 - The Rundown (2003) June 27 - Tooth Fairy (2010) In the meantime, please enjoy Matt's semi-spoiler-y review of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. And please follow us on YouTube to get all kinds of bonus content:
info_outline
161. I Love You, Man (with Wade Hymel)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Friend of the Show Wade Hymel makes his triumphant return to the podcast, and he’s brought with him I Love You, Man (2009). So what’s up with men, huh? With their man caves, and their jam seshes, and their pizza pies. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t help but love ‘em, am I right? And how do adults make friends anyway? It’s pretty weird. Somebody should make a movie about it. Oh, that’s what this movie is. Hear Wade's amazing album WHO SAID THAT? on Apple Music (), Spotify (), or wherever else music is streamed. Or you can purchase the...
info_outline
160. Wayne’s World
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Join us at Stan Mikita’s for crullers, dear listener, as we go through one of the very best comedies of the 1990s: It’s Wayne’s World. Excellent. But is it truly Wayne’s world? How much control does Wayne really have? What does he want? What does he stand for? And will he ever transcend the limitations of his corporeal space? We definitively answer these and so much more, as we cover both the making of the movie (including what sounds like a very difficult experience for director Penelope Spheeris in having to work with Mike Myers) and the movie itself, reading very...
info_outline
159. Final Destination
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Laci and Matt are broadcasting to you from a cabin in the woods, where they're eating canned cat food with oven mitts, trying to dodge that pesky Grim Reaper. But the rats need their cheese, so here’s a new episode about Final Destination (2000). (You’re the rat, I guess.) It’s the movie that launched one of the great horror franchises. A franchise that Matt posits is Friday the 13th for the decade of the 2000s. This series has it all: Primitive cell phones! Internet research on big ole computers! And nu-metal, nu-metal, nu-metal. And it all started here, with...
info_outline
Thunderbolts* Review + MCU Roundtable
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Matt's declaration that he was forever finished with the Marvel Cinematic Universe lasted all of one movie, once Thunderbolts* started getting good reviews. So he went out and saw it, and thought it was..... okay. But to go through it, he needed to bring on two big-time fans of the movie, so Neophyte Reviews and Screen Time Kota join the show for a discussion of Thunderbolts* and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. This CLIP features the first 35 minutes of the discussion. You can get the rest of the discussion by subscribing to LOAD BEARING BEAMS: COLLECTOR'S EDITION on Patreon:...
info_outline
158. Death Proof (with Cinema Chris)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Please note: Like how Death Proof uses fake film grain to make it seem like it’s an older movie, only to stop doing it halfway through, Laci and Matt’s audio improves halfway through this episode. You might not even notice the audio isn't great in the first half... but if you do, just know it gets better eventually. Friend of the Show Cinema Chris joins Laci and Matt to talk about Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007). Originally a 90-minute movie presented as part of a double feature alongside Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Death Proof now stands on its own (in...
info_outlineFriend of the Show Jen (@JenWalksN2Walls on TikTok) joins us to cover Sister Act 2. We once again follow the misadventures of Deloris (Whoopi Goldberg), a Las Vegas headliner who selfishly abandons the backup dancers, crew members, and support staff who rely on her show to make their living, all so she can go be a substitute teacher at a Catholic school for some reason. Seriously, is she paying all these people out of her pocket while her show is on hiatus? Or is she like Jimmy Fallon during the 2023 strikes, sending them each a $20 gift card and best wishes?
Anyway. This movie’s a lot of fun, but it is all over the place. Looking into the production history, we see it’s a hastily produced sequel that seems almost as if it started as an original, unrelated script about a high school choir competition and then had the Sister Act nuns awkwardly grafted onto it. Still, Whoopi Goldberg is her usual delightful self, but she’s outshined by these delightful kids, including a just-about-to-be-a-superstar Lauryn Hill as Rita, a high schooler whose mom hates choirs more than anything else.
Next week: Death Proof (2007)
Subscribe to our Patreon, Load Bearing Beams: Collector's Edition for $5 a month to get extra episodes! In April, we’re covering the pilot episode of the American Office, Matt has thoughts on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and we’re reviewing M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. Subscribe at patreon.com/loadbearingbeams
Time stamps:
00:06:42 — Our personal histories with Sister Act 2
00:21:45 — History segment: Production of Sister Act 2 under director Bill Duke and its lasting legacy
00:39:30 — In-depth movie discussion
01:30:30 — Final thoughts and star ratings
Sources:
“Bill Duke on ‘Deep Cover,’ ‘Sister Act 2,’ and Reshaping What Black Movies Could Be in the ’90s” by Robert Daniels | IndieWire (2022) - https://bit.ly/3RNWPvw
“How did ‘Sister Act 2’ become a classic musical?” by David Dennis Jr. | Andscape (2019) - https://bit.ly/3Yz9Xse
“Sister Act 2 Cast Reunites to Sing 'Joyful, Joyful' and 'Oh Happy Day,' 30 Years After Film — Watch” by Dave Quinn | People Magazine (2024) - https://bit.ly/3G80r98
“A Fresh Take on Black America: On ‘Sister Act 2’” by Brandon Tensley | Los Angeles Review of Books (2023) - https://bit.ly/4iiL9vS
“‘Sister Act 2’ Set the Gold Standard for Bad Sequels” by Caspar Salmon | Vice (2018) - https://bit.ly/3RkxkSv
“Whoopi Goldberg looks back on Sister Act” by Mary Sellosi | Entertainment Weekly (2017) - https://bit.ly/4ig3Obm
Artwork by Laci Roth.
Music by Rural Route Nine. Listen to their album The Joy of Averages on Spotify (https://bit.ly/48WBtUa), Apple Music (https://bit.ly/3Q6kOVC), or YouTube (https://bit.ly/3MbU6tC).
Songs by Rural Route Nine in this episode:
“Winston-Salem” - https://youtu.be/-acMutUf8IM
“Snake Drama” - https://youtu.be/xrzz8_2Mqkg
“The Bible Towers of Bluebonnet” - https://youtu.be/k7wlxTGGEIQ
Follow the show!
Twitter: @LoadBearingPod | @MattStokes9 | @LRothConcepts
Instagram: @loadbearingbeams
TikTok: @load.bearing.beams | @mattstokes9
Letterboxd: @loadbearinglaci | @mattstokes9
Bluesky: @loadbearingbeams.bsky.social