Big Daddy Dispatch: December 2024

 Dispatch Ninety-One, December 2, 2024

Greetings WHM Family!

Somehow, this year has creeped to its inevitable and miserable end. What a difference a month makes, huh? Well, don’t worry, your pals at WHM HQ are going to be as irreverent, stupid, and filthy as we have ever been, we don’t care which way the wind’s blowin’*, we’re just gonna keep yucking it up for you folks and hopefully lighten things up a bit, yeah?

Speaking of lightening things up, how about some HOLIDAY CONTENT?! YEAH! This month we basically turn into the Hallmark channel as most of our content has something to do with saccharine, Christmas-related horseshit! That’s what this country needs! Right???

As always, and especially in dark times, at the end of the year we need to take a moment to thank you all for your incredible support this last year.  WHM Fans are the best fans in the business, bar none. We just got back from Seattle and Portland and getting to meet new friends and hear their stories always touches us. Having great people like you dig our stuff and even pay your hard-earned cash to get it? That means everything to us and allows us to keep putting out all these shows, year after year. It’s a real privilege to perform for you folks, and we take that privilege seriously.

 So, in all sincerity, thank you from Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve.

Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

Image Credit: We Hate Movies Holiday Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

*Oh, FYI, we DO care which way the wind is blowing, and if you do too, please check out our Merch section below for a cool announcement.

HOLY SHIT, IT’S A WHM FALL TOUR!

It’s almost over! That’s right, THIS Wednesday we take our frigid li’l buns NORTHWARD to Boston to talk about the one and only, Pretty Woman! This is going to be a barn burner of a show and Laugh Boston is such a beautiful venue we can’t wait to get back there and hang out with you all for a few hours and talk about the world’s oldest profession—Podcasting!

Tickets are available now at our website! Don’t miss out and get yours NOW!

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 766 – Batman: The Movie (1966)

To kick off our glorious We Love Movies month, we headed back to the sixties to run around with big bombs with our close personal friends, Batman and Robin as they try to fend off a devious plot hatched by their rogues’ gallery. Is there a future where we get more superhero movies that are shorter than an hour and forty-five minutes? Where do these depictions of these villains land in the pantheon? Why are so many marine animals being obliterated in this film? Want to see a bat-vehicle? Apparently, the guy is just stashing them in broad fucking daylight. What a guy!

Episode 767 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Andrew, Eric, Chris, and Steve make for the summit of Runtime Mountain by taking on the Extended Edition of the final film of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, the ending-happy Return of the King. Seriously, what’s with all the endings? Are the extended editions worth it for the story they include? Dead Saruman says “Yes!” Have cherry tomatoes ever looked less appetizing than in this film? Is this the high-water mark for modern fantasy blockbusters? Of course, it is. It’s the fucking Return of the King, man! All hail the ghost army!

Episode 768 – U.S. Marshals  (Patrons Only)

For this month’s special WHM, the fellas hit the road once again with Sam Gerard, the king of the marshals, who wrangles his team once more to chase and capture a former secret agent who he believes has killed one of his own. Can we get any actual character work or good fights with Wesley Snipes’ character, or is that too much? Couldn’t there have been a different kind of case for Gerard & Co.? Serial killer? Thieves? Something new? No? Okay then! I’ll just enjoy my serving of Joey Pants and go home and watch The Fugitive like a normal person.

Episode 769 – Gladiator (2000)

Just in time for its abhorrent, twenty-years-too-late sequel, the gang heads back to Rome AD 180 to serve under Russel Crowe’s Maximus, the would-be successor to Marcus Aurelias as emperor. Maximus is sent to death by Aurelias’ jealous son, Commodus but survives and makes his way back to Commodus through stardom as a gladiator. Is this one of Rid’s best? Is the Oliver Reed stuff here a precursor to the Tarkinification of modern blockbusters? (Hello there, Alien: Romulus!) How is this only one of three times Rid has received the best director nom? A Royal Rid entry if there ever was one, a perfect complement to the extreme Rotten Rid vibes emanating off of Gladiator II.

Episode 770 – The Wizard of Oz

To round out our beloved WLM month, we headed back into the twisters to visit our friends in Oz with young Dorothy as she makes friends, kills witches, and puts her dog’s life above everything and everyone else, as any good and responsible dog owner would. How did this creative team so seamlessly weave the adult and childlike elements of the story and its magnificent effects? How big of a nightmare was this thing behind the scenes? How many movies openly steeped in vaudeville work still survive in this condition? A weird and wondrous movie to this day.

WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?

 This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.

Andrew: I tried to play catch-up with some newer films I’ve missed over the last month or more. Here’s what went in front of my baby blues this month:

Juror #2 (2024): Clint’s final film got a beyond-raw deal with the theatrical release, and I know we talked about it on OSL several weeks back, but I wanted to hammer home again that I think everyone needs to see this one. It feels like back in the late-90s/early aughts when Clint was really firing on some interesting cylinders. Check it out. 

Joker: Folie à Deux (2024): I mean, yeah, it’s bad, no question. But more than any other film I’ve seen in a long time, this really feels like absolutely no one involved wanted to be there. With the exception of possibly Lady Gaga, whose music I don’t really listen to, but I’ve always had nothing but goodwill toward, everyone else in the film seems really PUT OUT that they have to make this movie. It really seems like Phillips, Phoenix & Co. were trying to pull a Springtime for Hitler with this thing.

Transformers One (2024): I was surprised how much I had a good time with this. Yes, it’s a bullshit “The Villain Wasn’t Always a Bad Guy” story, which I genuinely do despise, but Brian Tyree Henry and Chris Hemsworth have fun enough chemistry. The animation is really solid and it’s a fun robot adventure without any human bullshit, so yeah, kinda shocking, but it’s a fun movie!

Saturday Night (2024): Yeah, curiosity got the best of me. As a big fan of pre-9/11 SNL, the history and lore of the show is something that’s always fascinated me. Alas… as I said on Letterboxd, this movie is just obsessed with screaming to the heavens what a genius Lorne Michaels is, and I found that it couldn’t have cared less about the SNL players featured in the film. The performances are all really solid, including Sammy Fabelman as Lorne, and the highlight here is Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, but it’s a skip.

Rebel Ridge (2024):  Okay, let’s bookend this write-up with another film I really, really liked. I’d missed Saulnier’s last movie, Hold the Dark, but otherwise, I’ve been a big fan of his movies over the years. Boy, no exception here. This is a fantastic slow burn action/revenge picture here, with a stellar lead performance from Aaron Pierre. Hot damn. That dude is a straight-up movie star. Really liked Don Johnson as the crooked police chief, as well as AnnaSophia Robb playing Pierre’s woman on the inside, who’s actually given a lot to do, as well as a robust back story, so she actually feels like a real-deal character. Wish this shit got released in theaters! 

Chris: Here: Double features are often where I tend to make room for movies that I wasn’t necessarily planning to see on the big screen, and that’s how I came to see the latest foray into digital wizardry from Robert Zemeckis. I can’t say I loved this curious and eerie work, which adapts a graphic novel that takes place from a fixed physical position/perspective and travels all the way back to the days of the dinosaurs and back up to the days of McDonalds. As tricky and surprisingly bleak as the film is, it’s also emphatically sentimental in the ways that Bobby Z often is and though it can often feel like a surface-level sheen for darker ideas festering underneath, it can also just feel really cheesy. Here often feels like that, especially in the parts with de-aged Tom Hanks and Robin Wright and his family, which is most of the film. That being said, the overarching idea of the film and its visual construction are so fascinating to me that it didn’t matter much in the end. I even found myself moved by some of the cheese and stirred by a lot of the switches to the early days of America and the scenes with a young inventor and his wife. The similarities to Manoel de Oliveira are undeniable and shocking, frankly. I am impatient to give it a second spin, but one thing is already quite evident: this is the best of Zemeckis’s explorative journeys into digital effects. Something special, and also a little boring. I also finally got to see his first film, I Wanna Hold Your Hand – very good and should regularly be brought up as one of the better movies about The Beatles that doesn’t feature The Beatles.

Good One: What I find so striking about India Donaldson’s sharp, unyielding drama, centered on a hiking trip taken by a rich, recently remarried New Yorker (James Le Gros), his college-bound daughter, and his boisterous and recently divorced best friend, is how abrupt yet confident its climatic moves end up being. I understand why people are likening this to Kelly Reichardt, but the vibes are very different. Good One is an excoriating portrait of the micro-competitions that often make up male friendships and quietly set them to rot and break down over time, given a fresh and attentive witness in the form of the daughter, Sam, played exquisitely by Lily Collias. It’s squirm-inducing, riotous, and eerie at times, but if it was just that, it would feel a bit one-note. What Donaldson does in the last 20-30 minutes, which should not be ruined, turns a smart entertainment into a surprisingly curt and devastating series of tests of intimacy, which the daughter is often dominating and attempting to detonate. Difficult to stop thinking about this one, I have to say. Put it on a double bill with Julia Loktev’s oft-forgotten The Loneliest Planet and let the wincing commence.

Eric: The Killer (2024) - Wanted to like this but along with Silent Night (2023) this lands with a big thud. There are some great stunts and car crashes that you'd expect with John Woo but this movie continues his recent streak of English language movies with zero personality or interest outside of the action. 

Gladiator II (2024) - Couldn't believe this was just a beat for beat retelling of the first movie. "So then I also got Gladiatored!" That said, I think Rid is still doing better action, combat, and scale than pretty much any other commercial director currently working. The script here is the major problem and would probably play better if you never saw Gladiator which also makes the hero worship of Gladiator in it odd and awkward. If I was giving notes it would have been (spoilers ahead) to make our Gladiator an actual outsider and so he could align with Denzel Washington's Macrinus's plot, or perhaps the characters become combined. There's just no chutzpah here. That said, Denzel is great, as are a lot of the large-scale battles. 

 Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) - The part I liked the best in this is when he represented himself in court. That felt like something stupid the comic books would've done. While by no means good, I appreciate the idea of a movie villain just dealing with the ramifications of the last movie. Don't get me wrong though: It's definitely a not recommend. 

 The Nostril Picker (1988 but released 1993) - Not as much nose picking as advertised. It's about a loser who gets powers to turn into a young woman. This naturally means he goes to the local high school to get a peek at girls. The perversion doesn't end there because well, he eats some too. And not in the fun way! Sort of worth a watch?

 American Rickshaw (1989) - I had a lot of fun with this one, our lead is even tricked into appearing in pornography at one point! Also features Donald Pleasence as a televangelist who does battle with a witch he used to know. Very bizarre and entertaining. A wild ride and nice Miami filming locations.

 Steve: Did a whole lot of traveling this month, but I got some quality new and reparatory watches in. Here are some highlights:

 Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987): This was not a household staple growing up, and honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen this movie end to end in about thirty years or more. Holy shit, what a comic masterpiece. Watching Candy and Martin play off each other is a sheer delight and I think that’s what most movies that try to ape this film fail to grasp, this movie may have a good script (it does), it may have a great comedic director (it does), but what makes this movie is that it’s John Fucking Candy and Steve Fucking Martin holding the screen for 90 minutes straight. That’s it; it’s got very little bullshit, and a nice saccharine ending/twist (if you wanna call it that) so that the third act has emotional resonance, but what Hughes understood was to not let the movie get in the actors’ way. I shudder to think of a current comedic pairing that would be even half as delightful to watch.

 Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024): Courageous doesn’t even cover it. An unflinching portrait of living in a totalitarian, theocratic state, which as an historical document is invaluable, but thankfully, as cinema, it transcends that status to give us a sobering portrayal of a family undone by the State it serves. This pairs well with last year’s Zone of Interest, insofar as it shows the banality of evil, but allows for hope to exist in an oppressive system, however costly that hope might be. It also, and forgive me here, pairs well with The Shining, one of my favorite movies. Kubrick’s take on the King story was always the terror of living in a paternalistic power system, when that power imbalance is taken to its natural and bloody end, and here Mohammad Rasoulof plays out the same grim story, obviously with more political and religious relevance. Please see this movie.

 Evil Dead Rise (2023): A little late to the game on this one, but I really had fun with it! I think this is a bit grimmer than Raimi’s version, but the reverberance of the non-stop gore and shrieking deadites were more than enough for me to allow this to be a worthy entry in the franchise. I like the small apartment horror of it all, and when the chainsaw makes its appearance? You better believe I “woo hoo’d!” on my couch….to no one.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Sylvie, from Toronto who asks: “I'm planning a chill NYE-themed movie marathon for this New Years. What would you suggest??

 Andrew: It’s funny this question came up because we were discussing NYE movie options for our final episode of the year (see our schedule below!), so this topic has been front of mind. Here’s a couple films featuring NYE that you might wanna toss into the mix: The Holdovers, Metropolitan, Phantom Thread and The Apartment.

 Chris: The descriptor “chill” really is the limiter here, because I was about to tell you all about Kathryn Bigelow’s monumental Strange Days, but there is no world in which that movie could be described as chill. So, let’s start with the obvious and open with When Harry Met Sally – still a banger after all these years, thanks to unparalleled charismatic performances from Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, but also the late greats, Bruno Kirby & Carrie Fisher. Then, I think you can double-up the romantic comedy vibes with a personal favorite, Bridget Jones’ Diary, one of the few British comedies of the early aughts that I think still works. The nostalgists would have you going to Ghostbusters 2 but I am going to advise you go with The Hudsucker Proxy, maybe the strongest of the Coens’ out-and-out comedies alongside O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Hail, Caesar! Then shift into classic terrain and head back into The Apartment, just perfect. Then I’m going to suggest a trilogy of thoroughbred masterpieces to end out your night: Metropolitan, The Holdovers, and Phantom Thread. These can easily be replaced with An American in Paris, Boogie Nights, and Rocky. For my horror peeps, feel free to substitute New Year’s Evil and/or Angel Heart. There’s also a really good marathon lineup made entirely with movies made before 1965 for all the old-heads but I’ve spent too much time with this already. 

 Okay, fine: Remember the Night into An American in Paris into The Apartment into An Affair to Remember into Holiday Affair into Holiday into Penny Serenade into Mystery at the Wax Museum. Feel free to skip the last two if you are spending time with friends/family or get too fucked up or are possibly having sex instead.

 Eric: Just put the end of Gremlins 2 on a loop. Besides the suggestions of my colleagues, if you want to just unplug and aren't strict to New Years Eve being in the movies, I'd say Bond is a pretty good idea. I enjoy those around the holidays because it's something you can just keep putting on from one film to the next and it appeals to all generations. This James Bond fella even wears a tuxedo and suits and shit, motherfucker always looks like he's going to a New Year's Eve party.

 Steve: Hilariously enough this is just what my wife and I did last year, so it’s a very easy question to answer. We got the Criterion box set “A Whit Stilman Trilogy: Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco” and it fit the bill perfectly. Just a quick suggestion, we opted for Barcelona first, even though it breaks the chronology (which isn’t important). The move is Barcelona right before dinner. Nice dinner. Metropolitan after dinner taking you right to midnight. Midnight rolls, celebrate. Then Last Days of Disco. You’ll have had a vaguely posh, chill New Year’s Eve. 

DECEMBER SCHEDULE

 Say what? The schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter, you get a sneak peek at what we're putting out for December!

 Episode 771 – The Santa Clause (Live in Jersey City)  

Episode 772 – Deck the Halls

Episode 773 – The Holiday (2006)

Episode 774 – Ernest Saves Christmas

Episode 775 – New Year’s Evil

Patreon Episodes:

We Love Movies – Lethal Weapon 2

Animation Damnation: The Little Drummer Boy (1968)

The Nexus: TOSTAS: “More Tribbles, More Troubles” (s1, 5), TNG: “Clues” (s4, e14)

Gleep Glossary: Zuckuss

MELR0210: 90210: “The Game is Chicken” (s3, e17) Melrose Place: “It’s a Bad World After All” (s3, e2)

Once in a Lifetime: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder

Q4 Synchable Commentary:

Hulk (2003) art by Felipe Sobreiro

PATREON RSS BUG 

If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try unsubscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader." 

Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support! 

UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION

On Screen Live is back! That’s right, we’re resuming our (mostly) weekly box-office recap show, where you can hear quick reviews of recent flicks, watch live trailer reactions and just see us do our thing week in and week out! Check us out on Mondays at Noon for all that and more! Subscribe on our YouTube Channel to never miss a broadcast!

We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like WTF Exorcism with Marc Merrin, Dr. Loomis is the Worst Doctor, Dilf Den, George Bailey as Michael Meyers, John Wick-Mentary,  Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David!Muppet Hitchcock Presents, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboardepisode! Complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, Full Episodes likeRampage (2018),Any Which Way You Can, Bram Stoker’s Draculaand Saw III. Like we said above these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already! 

TJ Hooker…Is back! And this time Eric and Ben follow T.J. as his reputation is smeared by those bums in Internal Affairs!  Listen here!

 Please note that from now until at least the end of 2025, ALL PROFITS from our Tee Public store will be going directly to the Center for Reproductive rights! Shit’s bad out there and we know it’s likely to get worse and we want to do something,  SO, If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our TeePublic store! We have some hot off the presses designs by Felipe Sobreiro such as the Scream 4 Live Show, Too Old For This Shit and Sheenpril Logos as well as A Certain Fat Director enjoying his favorite film filter of all time! We also have "The DILF Den", and a "Crispy Critters" design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill!  There’s a ton of other great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, Demon-o's Pizza, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast design and many more, with more to come! 

That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! Thanks again for a terrific year! See you next month for the Worst of 2024!

Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies