Movies, Films & Flix

You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).

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Mark and Aaron Neuwirth (@AaronsPS4 on X) talk about their favorite 2025 action scenes from Gladiator Underground, Diablo, Prisoner of War, Baby Assassins 3, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Reflection in a Dead Diamond, Holy Night: Demon Hunters, Sisu: Road to Revenge, Nobody 2, Influencers, The Naked Gun, Splitsville, Ballerina, The Prosecutor, The Phoenician Scheme and about 35 other cool movies. Enjoy!

Make sure to listen to the Out Now With Aaron and Abe Podcast (@OutNow_Podcast on X) and 2 Black Guys Talk Godzilla (@BlkGodzillaTalk on X).

If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!

Quick thoughts:

1. The world needs more apocalyptic time-loop action-comedy-drama films
2. The cast is stacked. Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, and Juno Temple rule.
3. I had no clue where it was going, and that is part of the fun
4. Always engage your emergency brake while chasing time travelers
5. The much-advertised Apple Berry Peach tea sounds pretty good. The marketing worked. 
6. Pepsi. Pepsi. Pepsi. Pepsi. Pepsi
7. It makes me happy that Gore Verbinski loves Repo Man (1984)

If you’re going to hire one actor to play a stressed-out time traveler who delivers an 11-page monologue and is dressed like a vagabond from the Blade Runner world, you can’t do any better than Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell. Rockwell is no stranger to science fiction/fantasy as he’s appeared in Moon, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mute, Cowboys and Aliens, and Galaxy Quest, so his hyper-active time traveler character named The Man From the Future never feels out of place in a modern-day world obsessed with cell phones. For the opening 11-page monologue delivered in the Los Angeles-based Norm’s Diner, Verbinski allowed Rockwell to create the path he would take through the diner as he tries to sell the patrons on embarking on a suicide mission.  Production Designer David Brisbin then constructed the diner set to service his performance (thank you press notes), by creating a “dance floor” which allowed Rockwell to do his thing (this is unrelated, but watch this supercut of Rockwell dancing – it’s great). 

The Man From the Future (it’s his name) looks like he used a futuristic dumpster filled with computer odds and ends to send himself back in time for his world-saving mission. It’s the 117th time he’s attempted the mission, and the weight of saving the world, on top of watching 116 groups of people fail (and die terribly) has turned him into a motor-mouthed cynic who never allows his thumb to leave the trigger of his time vest (that sends him back to the future). He’s not there to rescue a waitress from a murderous android; he’s there to gather several diner patrons (preferably 7), so they can travel to a suburban home where the uber-AI is about to be unleashed.  From the jump, The Man From the Future is ‘on the clock’ as he has a ticking clock that’s ticking away towards the end of humanity. It’s his job to traverse a dangerous Los Angeles hellscape littered with masked killers, machete-wielding unhomed people and phone-obsessed teenagers.  

The 117th crew is made up of single-mom Susan (Juno Temple), cell phone (and Wifi) allergic Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), high school teachers Mark and Janet (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz), and three other characters who aren’t important enough to have their backstories told through flashbacks. It’s a ragtag group, but there’s something about them that feels special. Most importantly, they’re led by a character played by Sam Rockwell. The movie works because Sam Rockwell can jump over tables and sass his team while wearing a 40-pound costume. He’s cynical, optimistic, angry, charming, and rakish at the same time. He’s seen a lot of death, but he won’t stop until he can save the world. Equally important are the grounded performances from Juno Temple and Haley Lu Richardson who humanize the hijinks as they deal with school shootings (they happen every day), secretive cloning facilities (that look like Apple stores) and bloody noses caused by an allergy to cell phones.

Part of the fun of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die are kernels of information and character backstories spread throughout the film, so I don’t want to spoil anything that will make the viewing experience less enjoyable. I will say that the world the movie takes place in is wildly cynical, as school shootings happen so frequently that parents (who love the Tim Burton-directed Mars Attacks) expect their child to be shot while going to class. In fact, high schools have gotten so bad that the students stare into their phones during class are all appalled when they have to read Anna Karenina instead of watching the “ancient” 2012 film or listening to the 35-hour audiobook. It’s a bleak place that feels right at home in the worlds of The Terminator, 12 Monkeys, and The World’s End. 

After most major studios passed on the script, Verbinski forced the movie into existence by starting the casting process and announcing each new cast member (getting Sam Rockwell helped a lot). After learning the movie would be too expensive to shoot in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Winnipeg, Verbinski traveled to South Africa to get the movie made. Constantin Film and BriarCliff Entertainment eventually signed on to fund and distribute the project, and now we have a fun time-travel movie that is too out there for most major studios. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is the type of film that could only be made by someone like Gore Verbinski, who, between The Ring, Rango, Pirates of the Caribbean 1-3, Mousehunt, The Weather Man, and A Cure for Wellness, knows how to combine humor, drama, action, horror and animation into something unique. Before he was directing gigantic blockbusters, Verbinski played in several punk bands and directed music videos for Bad Religion and NOFX, so he has a punk side that came in handy when getting this movie made. It’s actually kind of a miracle that he and writer Matthew Robinson got an apocalyptic time-loop action-comedy-drama made. 

Final Thoughts – Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is worth 117 trips to the theater. 

You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).

If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.

Mark and Joey Lewandowski (@2Fast2Forever on X) discuss the 2016 sports comedy Everybody Wants Some!!. Directed by Richard Linklater and starring Glen Powell, Tyler Hoechlin, Wyatt Russell and a broken ping-pong paddle, the movie focuses on the goings-on of a college baseball team. In this episode, they also talk about hangout movies, refrigerator cats, and the excellence of Zoey Deutch. 

If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!

Quick Thoughts

1. Between The Boy and The Beast, Belle, and Scarlet, Hosoda loves featuring multiple worlds and time frames in his films. 
2. It does seem like Hosoda was too focused on the gorgeous visuals to clean up the screenplay. The story isn’t tight, which hurts the flow of the film.
3. I love a random dance scene in a movie about a revenge-driven princess.
4. It’s worth a trip to an IMAX theater.
5. The opening five minutes rule.

With an 80% CGI and 20% hand-drawn blend of animation, Scarlet is an interesting film to behold. The screenplay is far from tight, but it looks and sounds great in theaters, which means there’s enough good stuff to justify a trip to the cinema. Perhaps it’s because Hosoda wrote the script by himself, and not with Satoko Okudera (Wolf Children, Summer Wars, The Girl Who Jumped Through Time), or maybe it’s because the retelling of Hamlet becomes too ambitious, but the film lacks momentum and sags after an excellent opening. 

I’ve watched Scarlet twice and I have some contradictory feelings about it. I love the idea of a 16th century Danish princess named Scarlet (Mana Ashida) battling her way through an afterlife dubbed the Otherworld, but the storytelling behind her revenge mission to kill her uncle Claudius is too naive and broad. The biggest problem with the movie is that Scarlet’s journey towards enlightenment is loaded with platitudes and on-the-nose dialogue that is about as subtle as a punch to the nose. On paper, teaming Scarlet up with an idealistic modern-day nurse named Hijiri (Masaki Okada) is a fun idea (being that they are complete opposites), but Hijiri never registers as a real person because he’s wildly naive in a world filled with death and destruction, which means he’s a plot device and not a three-dimensional character. This is a shame because Hosoda’s filmography is jam-packed with well-written characters who bridge their differences to find friendship, balance and maturity (Watch Wolf Children, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and The Boy and the Beast now). 

The opening five minutes are gorgeous and ironically don’t help the overall film because they create visual expectations that aren’t matched until the finale (the middle section of Scarlet is a slog). Watching Scarlet wander around an Otherworld that is home to lightning-spewing dragons, vast deserts, and dead soldiers (whose weapons and armor are used by Scarlet) is highly entertaining and showcases the world that Studio Chizo and Digital Frontier created. While in the Otherworld, she engages in some fun scraps with warriors sent by her power-hungry uncle Claudius (Kôji Yakusho), who isn’t pleased that his niece is trying to send him into nothingness (you can die in the Otherworld purgatory). Scarlet is justifiably angry at Claudius because he killed her father (his brother) and poisoned her while she was attempting to poison him. Now, she’s in the Otherworld looking for revenge. Her quest for murder opens up an expansive world filled with nomads, bambits, cavernous castles, fist-fights, stairways to heaven, and assassins named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Hosoda spent four years making this film and the overall look is wonderful, but its technological achievements far outweigh anything the story has to offer. Hosoda made sure to respect traditional Japanese 2d animation while updating the methods used to create the animated experiences. The end result blends hand-drawn animation stylings with an eye-pleasing 3D world. 16th Belgian was created with hand-drawn work, while the Otherworld is CG. Scarlet and Hijiri were designed by animation legend Jin Jim (Frozen, Big Hero 6), which explains why Scarlet looks awesome.

Final Thoughts – If you can watch it on an IMAX screen I totally recommend you make the trip.

Dracula (2025) thoughts

1. You haven’t fully lived until you’ve seen a gargoyle land a hurricanrana on a Romanian soldier.
2. Matilda De Angelis is the MVP. She’s on another level
3. It’s a Dracula film directed and written by a person who has no interest in Dracula. It’s an interesting choice. 
4. After appearing in Frankenstein (2025) and Dracula (2025), Christoph Waltz should continue appearing in monster movie remakes. 
5. I love that a $50 million budgeted Dracula film exists because Luc Besson loves Caleb Landry Jones.
6. Between Get Out, The Outpost, The Dead Don’t Die, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Florida Project, War on Everyone, Byzantium, and No Country for Old Men, Caleb Landry Jones has a stacked filmography. 

After Guilermo del Toro (Frankenstein) and Robert Eggers (Nosferatu) tackled their long-time passion projects with intense reverence, it was a unique experience watching the Luc Besson directed Dracula. What’s interesting and unique about Besson’s film is that he isn’t a fan of Dracula, or horror movies. The reason Dracula exists is that Besson loves Caleb Landry Jones (who starred in DogMan, which was directed by Besson), and he wanted to create a starring vehicle for him. The end result is a tonal mishmash that ends with a gang of gargoyles battling a platoon of Romanian soldiers led by a guy named Prist (Christoph Waltz). Besson wasn’t interested in blood-sucking, vampire orgies, or a dreary mood, and instead was laser-focused on an immortal vampire spending 400 years looking for his reincarnated wife. Dracula’s sharp edges (and teeth) are softened as he becomes a tragic villain who after attempting to kill himself many times (in a funny moment involving at least eight jumps from a castle tower), develops a perfume to help him find his reincarnated wife. 

The film opens with Prince Vladimir of Wallachia (Caleb Landry Jones) and his wife Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) enjoying a loving romp in their large bedroom located inside a gothic Romanian castle. The two are clearly in love and they genuinely seem to like each other, but their lovemaking is interrupted when Prince Vladimir is dragged out of his bed so he can fight a group of invading Ottomans (his ornate armour will remind many people of Dracula’s red armor in Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula). While he’s away, Elizabeta is sent to a safe location several miles from the battlefield. While on her journey, her convoy is attacked, and she’s killed during a skirmish between Prince Vladimir (who left the battlefield to save her) and several Ottoman soldiers. After her death, Vladimir renounces his faith, kills a head priest, and is cursed with immortality by God. From there, Dracula travels the world for hundreds of years looking for his reincarnated wife, with little success. During his quest, he creates a pungent perfume that intoxicates women, and the smelly concoction aids him when he turns a group of French socialites into an army of vampire investigators who scour the world looking for Elisabeta. Chief among them is Maria (Matilda De Angelis – having a blast), who locates a woman named Mina (the reincarnation of Elisabeta) in Paris after Dracula sees her face in a locket owned by solicitor Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), who visited Dracula’s Romanian castle for business reasons. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the proceedings, but I will say that there are beheadings, dance scenes, sword fights, mouse blood cocktails, lobster towers (amazing), magic candles, transfusions, sinking gargoyles, and ornate rings worn by Dracula. 

The interesting thing about Besson’s Dracula film is that he’s clearly not interested in the action or horror elements that come with Dracula. The opening battle looks cheap, there’s never any tension, and the final battle features Dracula’s gargoyle servants using WWE wrestling moves on overmatched Romanian soldiers. What Besson was interested in were the costumes, castles, makeup, ballrooms, and music of the era. This kept Corinne Bruand (costume designer), Danny Elfman (composer), Julia Floch-Carbonel (key makeup artist) and Hugues Tissandier (production designer) very busy as they were tasked with creating gowns (there’s a gown with an eight meter headdress that looks great during a horse chase), ballrooms (which took up entire soundstages), musical cues, props, and prosthetic makeup to transform Caleb Landry Jones into a 400-year old vampire. Overall, it’s a fantastic-looking production that was clearly focused on lavish production design and costuming.

In interviews, Besson has said that Dracula was sparked by his “fascination” with Caleb Landry Jones rather than by a particular interest in the Dracula tale. If you’re looking for something akin to Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Nosferatu (any of them), you’ll be disappointed because Besson’s take on a vampire legend is more interested in love, perfume, and Caleb Landry Jones.