recent lunchtime movies
Rocky III – Podcast
Rocky III picks up, literally, exactly where Rocky II left off. And when I say literally, I mean it as the famous final seconds of the epic rematch between Apollo Creed and Balboa are shown (which, of course, starts a theme for Rocky III where the even more epic rubber match is somehow a concept not thought of). Following this bout against Apollo Creed, Rocky Balboa is crowned the heavyweight champion of the world. The guitar riff starts and Rocky III introduces us to what will soon become a Rocky staple – the music video montage...
Full Review
Alien – Podcast
In a world where vile, evil men rule the known galaxy, comes a tale of horror on an epic scale. Our film begins, out in the depths of space, aboard a commercial ship called Nostromo. It’s on a steady course back to Earth with twenty million tons of cargo in tow. The seven-member crew is abruptly awakened from their stasis by the onboard computer in order to investigate a transmission coming from a near by planet. Since they are corporate minions with the freedom of a Walmart greeter, they do as they are told...
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Glory – Podcast
The movie takes place during the Civil War, and its story is based on the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first unit of the U.S. Army made up entirely of black soldiers. Consistent with Hollywood doctrine, this story of brave black soldiers during our Nation’s time of greatest crisis can best be told through the eyes of a white man. In 1989, there was but one white actor who possessed the qualities necessary to play emissary and spokesman for all African-Americans, only one man who had the gravitas one would expect...
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Field of Dreams – Podcast
Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, gather around as I recount the tale of the Field of Dreams. The supernatural, time-traveling, baseball, family, drama that depicts the return of our left-fielder and savior, Shoeless Joe Jackson. Our tale begins with a small Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella. Now, Brother Ray is a farmer of corn, and not a good one at that. One day, while tending his crop, Ray began hearing voices. Voices that tell him, “If you build it, he will come.” Now many good Christians in the Bible belt would...
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Johnny Dangerously – Podcast
The year: sometime in the 1930s. Location: New York City. Topic: Crime. Two rival gangs compete for the whoring, loan sharking, and shady night club business in New York City. One gang is led by a butter and egg man who goes by the name of Roman Troy Maroni. The other gang is led by that fargin icehole, Jocko Dundee, played by Ray Ramano’s dad. Whose gang should we root for? Well, this is 80s Hollywood, so clearly, white is right and ethnic is wrong. Jocko Dundee’s gang...
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The Transformers: The Movie – Podcast
Transformers: The Movie, not to be confused with Transformers the movie, is a timeless tale of redemption, coming of age, and giant robots beating the metallic snot out of each other. The movie takes place in distant future of 2005 - a carefree future where children use hover-boards and cassette tapes, which have replaced the vastly inferior MP3s. The movie opens with Unicron, a metallic, space-anus, with the thundering voice of Orson Wells, munching on...
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Superman: The Movie – Podcast
This week’s movie begins on the planet Krypton, a planet made of crystal. Jor-El, the biological dad of Superman, is hard at work sentencing three bad guys to life in a mirror. We know they are bad guys because they wear black, while everyone else on Krypton wears white. How did they expect to get away with anything with those clever disguises. After sentencing the trio to hard time as the changing room mirror in Lane Bryant, Jor-El tries to convince the leaders of Krypton to flee the planet...
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The Warriors – Podcast
The Warriors takes place in a magical land called New York. Where each gang is assigned a fashion designer – while some designers are fashion forward with Broadway flare -like the Baseball Furies (a mix of Clockwork Orange, Damn Yankees, and Cats) other settle for overalls and roller skates (I am thinking that these designers really liked the closing scene in every Chips episode – except Ponch and John looked much tougher). The story begins with the Warriors being invited to a New York gang convention...
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The Fly (1986) – Podcast
Back in the 80s, when AIDS was all the rage, but homosexuality was tucked far away in the closet, Hollywood took a more subtle approach to broaching the topic of the disease. Instead of a sappy Philadelphia tale with the affable Tom Hanks in the lead, the horror film, The Fly, was made. Its grotesque nature was a direct reflection of society’s vision of the virus on a human. Our movie begins with a socially awkward, but brilliant scientist named Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum...
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Airplane!
Ted Stryker is a war hero with a checkered battle record. He made the decision to fly too low and men died. He lost his confidence, and he now he won’t fly again. But he lost more than his wings that fateful day in the war. The lingering effects of his mistake drove his girl away too. Now she’s a stewardess – that’s right, I said stewardess and not flight attendant because this movie came out in 1980 in the days when you could smoke on planes and when the stewards and stewardesses still flew the friendly skies...
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