Big Daddy Dispatch: December 2022

Dispatch Seventy December 2nd, 2022




Greetings WHM Family!

Oh my god we're back on the East Coast! What a blast it was to see you folks out West. Denver, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix were such generous hosts and we drank so much goddamn beer and tall glasses of water, now it's time for a yuletide rest back here at home. It was such a privilege to play for you folks and hot damn was it cool to meet you all too! We're already working on next year's tour stops but we can tease that you should watch all WHM spaces for an internet live show in the New Year. Get excited for that!

Other than that it's been another fantastic year, all due to your generous support. I can't believe we're finishing our 12th year of this insane adventure and we can only thank you al for sticking with us and promise that there's a lot more laughs on the way. That's a promise.

GET HYPED FOR SOME BLUE DICK JOKES THIS MONTH FOLKS!


Banner Credit: We Hate Movies The Big Daddy Dispatch by Felipe Sobreiro

Image Credit: WHM at CB LIVE in Phoenix by Chelsea Jupin

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 640 –  North by Northwest



To kick of We Love Movies month, the boys get mistaken for super spies with Cary Grant as he ruins his mom-centric life with a quick bit of mistaken identity, leading him to avoid dangerous men of both the hench and hit variety and try to find time to get an extremely horny Eva Marie Saint on her back. Doesn’t this essentially boil down to an escapist fantasy for bored, rich white men who want adventure? Are there actually houses on top of the Mount Rushmore? What exactly is the deal with Martin Landau and James Mason’s characters? Also, this Alfred Hitchcock guy? Pretty good at making with the moving pictures.

Episode 641 – Thief with Jamelle Bouie

New York Times columnist, Unclear and Present Danger co-host, and pal of the show Jamelle Bouie returns to the program for some old-fashioned Mann talk, specifically his crystalline debut in which James Caan’s surpassingly professional diamond snatcher comes into conflict with his mentor’s pending death and a ruthless, appealing new partnership. Is Robert Prosky’s Leo one of the greatest villains of the 1980s? How big of an issue is it that James Caan’s character in this film is completely insane? Has James Belushi ever been better in any film or role? May we all be able to fully realize our Willy-Nelson-adorned dream-boards in the future.

Episode 642 – The Royal Tenenbaums

Fuck the haters! WHM rides or dies for the fussiest filmmaker to ever exist by talking about his (second?) breakout hit, in which Gene Hackman’s careless and corrupt paterfamilias attempts to return to the wealthy, bitter family he was (rightly) kicked out of over a decade before. Why does this very fancy boy director make so many people angry? Is this the last real peak of the disturbed-family dark comedy boom of the late 90s?  Is Gene Hackman the only actor to ever leave Hollywood right at the exactly correct time? Too many friendships end with a mostly harmless stabbing.

Episode 643 – Hannibal  (Patrons Only WHM)

For this month’s flipped-script We Hate Movies episode, Andrew, Eric, Chris, and Steve take on the notorious sequel to The Silence of Lambs, which finds famed people-eater Hannibal Lecter on the run in Italy with a re-cast Clarice Starling once again barely on his trail. What is with the opening with the super villain who wants to give everyone AIDS? What aside from hair color and name connect Moore’s Clarice to Foster’s Clarice? Is the detective character putting his life on the line for good opera tickets? As one would expect, the best scene comes at the very end and features Ray Liotta prominently.

Episode 644 – Point Break with Matt Christman and Will Menaker



The gang hits the beach with Will Menaker and Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House to hunt down a gang of presidential-mask-wearing bank robbers who fund a life of surfing and extreme sports with a small criminal empire. Is Johnny Utah the worst cop in the history of film? Can you trust a man as hot as Patrick Swayze? Is a sloppy meatball sandwich (or two?) really the best meal to have before a citywide chase? See you in Australia, Johnny!

Episode 645 – Bram Stoker's Dracula



To end out WLM month, the boys head out into Transylvania with Keanu Reeves to visit big-haired Dracula before he heads back to England to seduce reincarnated Winona Ryder. Has Anthony Hopkins ever had such wildly manic energy like he does here? Is Keanu really all that bad in this? Does this constitute the inarguable end of the Coppolas miracle run? The accent work in this one is especially atrocious, and you’re welcome for that.

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: Okay, so this month was a complete and total blur. I can tell you one thing: I watched War Games, Fatal Attraction, and Universal Soldier at least three times apiece during our final run of shows for the year. By the way, I just wanted to thank everyone who came out to those shows. It was a real thrill to get to new cities and do the show for you all. It meant a lot seeing everyone out there! Now, aside from the tour titles, another thing we watch a lot when we’re on the road is our beloved Hotel TV. If you get a hotel with a decent cable package (which is a must for us), you can spin the wheel and see what all movies and TV you can catch without having to hook your laptop up to the TV! So here’s a list of some Hotel TV titles, along with some other stuff I checked out this month: 

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story - Sorry to all the losers and haters, but I laughed myself stupid with this. Probably the hardest I’ve laughed at a film since MacGruber. Really wish I could’ve seen it in a theater with a big audience. Anyway, I really enjoyed myself and then immediately deleted the Roku app when it was done. Would recommend you do the same! 

From Dusk Till Dawn - It was late one night in SLC when Steve sent word: From Dusk Till Dawn was just starting on Hotel TV. Well, hot damn, it had been a minute with this one and boy, it holds up big time. I wish Clooney would go back to playing total scum bags like Seth Gecko. 

Absolute Power  - This was another Hotel TV gem. I’d never seen it before and the opening crime sequence got me hooked. Rarely did Hackman go sleazier than this president he’s playing! I was bummed that the ending to this is so rushed and shitty, because you have great Eastwood, great Hackman, and heck, even some great Laura Linney playing Eastwood’s put-upon daughter, and the ending kind of undercuts a lot of the good will the rest of the movie builds up. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Caught this at a nice theater in Sedona, Arizona, where I went to hide out after the tour for a week. I wanted to like this so much more, but unfortunately, the weight of having to address Boseman’s passing was a lot, plus adding all the MCU connective tissue on top of that just really dragged this down (and out—the film is 19 minutes shy of three hours). Heaven forbid we just told a single story and left all the Other Movies & TV Show Setups out of it. Like, sorry, but why did we need JLD and Martin Freeman in this fucking movie? And that “stinger” such as it is. Total disgrace. Just have that be the final moment of the film and ROLL CREDITS. If you don’t have extra footage from the Ironheart TV show, tough shit. Just let this movie be. Instead, they chose to chop up a really powerful moment to keep their stupid film format going. Give me a break. 

Songs for Drella  - Watched this on a flight via the Criterion Channel and lemme tell ya, at that final number, I was nearly balling on the plane. Reach out to your friends, folks. Check in. This one is excellent. 

Call Northside 777 - Another great selection from Criterion Channel. This James Stewart title had been on my radar for a while and I never got around to it until I was stuck in the air for 5 hours. It’s so fantastic. Should be talked about more alongside Stewart’s greatest performances. Plus, long before Batman and the Blues Brothers came to town, this production mostly shot on-location in Chicago in the mid-1940s, the first Hollywood feature to do so. Wild stuff. Total recommend. 

The Wolf of Wall Street - So I wound up watching a decent chunk of Goodfellas on Hotel TV over Thanksgiving and when we got back home, Chelsea and I were both eager to re-watch this guy, so I fired up the Paramount 4K. It’s a great, great movie. The maximalism on display, while likely not far from the reality, is a joy to take in as you sit there and seethe at all these fucking greedy morons. DiCaprio, Hill, Robbie, Chandler, Reiner, Bernthal… everyone is so good in this movie. That Bo Dietl cameo is certainly something too, I forgot about that pig popping up. 

Chris:  It’s been touring and Thanksgiving for the last few weeks, so I’ve been mostly working on catching up on 2022 domestic/international releases. It’s been mostly movies that I find interesting or vaguely entertaining that do not really cohere, a list that would include Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul, Amsterdam, She Said, Athena, Don’t Worry Darling, Smile, This Much I Know to Be True, Taurus, and Watcher. Then there’s the ones that I just did not like: Ticket to Paradise, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Women Talking, The Menu, Glass Onion, and Black Adam. And thankfully, there were a few genuine knockouts:

Wendell & Wild: Netflix clearly massacred parts of Henry Selick’s wild, inventive, and entirely overdue follow-up to his magnificent Coraline, but what remains is still far more enthralling, sensitive, and unwaveringly certain of the forces it opposes– the rich, prisons, for-profit churches and schools – than any other animated film I’ve seen this year. Demented, messy, and sincere in surprising and engaging ways, plus Key and Peele back together!

The Fabelmans: Someone ate their Wheaties! I was a big fan of Spielberg’s West Side Story and that now looks like a mere wind-up for The Fabelmans, the best movie this motherfucker has made since Jaws, and easily one of the best films of this year. This is also probably Spielberg’s messiest film since Munich, and all the better for it. For those who can only see the (entirely subverted) hagiography of making a fictional version of the filmmaker’s own childhood and adolescent years, I implore you to also see the strains of the film that suggest (rightly) that you have no control over anyone else’s life and that a life dedicated to one’s creative desire can offer comfort and even liberation but just as easily render you hermetic, alien, and uncaring. Not for nothing, all of that in stark contrast to the message of most Spielberg films, especially those made before Lincoln and Bridge of Spies.

The Banshees of Inisherin: Eric and me caught this on our free day in Phoenix and while I can’t say I love this movie, I have to give McDonagh credit for making a movie I wasn’t actively annoyed by, which has been his track record with me from the beginning of his filmmaking career. There’s a better premise here that he handles with newfound subtlety here, even if his more bombastic tendencies end up shining through in the film’s allusions to the Irish Civil War and its rupture of tragic, ridiculous violence toward the end. That being said, McDonagh gets about as close as he’s ever come to portraying something like convincing human relationships in crisis. This could go nowhere and just lead to a longer, even more difficult to tolerate version of the indefensible Three Billboards, but I’d prefer to imagine that this is a step toward more experimenting and refinement of McDonagh’s very real talents in the future. Hell, I’d take an adaptation of The Beauty Queen of Leenane at this point.


Eric: I didn't get to a TON of stuff this month considering the tour and like the other fellas, yeah, I watched a lot of the movies for the live shows multiple times!

That said, the number one film I will be recommending this month is Firecracker (1981) directed by Cirio H. Santiago. It's the simple story of a blonde knock-out played by Jillian Kesner in search of her sister in the Philippines and runs afoul of the mafia and must use her kung fu skills to defeat them. Yes, this is the movie that features a topless kung fu fight. Even if it wasn't for the nudity, this is a lean movie that does have good fight scenes. If that did it for you, keep the Santiago train rolling into 1993's Angelfist featuring Catya Sassoon (Vidal's daughter.)

Other stray things I saw:

Rewatched Love Potion No. 9 (1992) for the first time since it aired on Comedy Central in the late 90's or 2000. Anyway, it's not good! It's quite mediocre! Tate Donovan – no fuckin' thanks. Sandra Bullock though in those glasses? Yes, please. Another classic case of “this girl is ugly because she wears glasses.” Don't worry we reverse engineer a “voodoo” potion that makes the drinker appear sexually attractive to anyone and everyone which is given to us by Anne Bancroft of all people playing a, you guessed it, G-word! What makes this film interesting to me is they have Dylan Baker, yes, that Dylan Baker, playing the Prince of England! With scenes! Extended English accent and everything!

The Pit (1981) – I liked this one, it's lean, and features a pit full of critters. Reminded me of childhood!

Immortal Combat (1994) – Yeah, that's some title to put out in 1994. I wonder why they went with it? Original title was supposedly "Resort to Kill." Anyway, it's bizarre on every level with Roddy Piper and Sonny Chiba as cop partners trying to take down Meg Foster's island of undead killers. More boring than it sounds but interesting nevertheless. They kept Sonny Chiba off screen way too much but when he's there, he's great – you get multiple headshots with ninja stars from him in this. Also of note: Tiny Lister is in this! Plus, how about this connection? Deron McBee as a bad killer who'd go on to play Motaro the Horseboy in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

As for new things, I rewatched Tár and still loved it and caught The Banshees of Inisherin which I liked but did not love, which is par for the course for me and Martin McDonagh, but I do think this is his best, noting I did not see Seven Psychopaths.

Steve:  Somehow with all the running around I got a few good watches in this month! Here's some highlights:

Armageddon Time: Every year there seems to be a guarantee that there's a movie many people I respect love but I absolutely hate, and this year Armageddon Time, it's you. Baby, it's you. I just couldn't get behind this one. With the exception of two powerhouse performances from Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway (both thankfully rescued from TV), I didn't find much to like here. Even though the biographical similarities between me and the main character abounds, I just found the politics unbearably clunky, the kids far too generic (especially poor Jonny and his dying grandmother), and just the whole thing far too treacly for me to give a shit. I hope you all enjoy it! As always, I'm probably wrong!

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Two months ago I was very excited for this film, then the reviews started to trickle in and that excitement dwindled with the realization that this would be yet another Phase 4 clusterfuck. I caught this just last night, and yep. That's where we are. It's almost unfair to judge this movie as to look at it is to finally see the enormity of the hole that Chadwick Boseman's tragic passing left in this franchise. It felt like it would be impossible to surmount, and YEP they sure didn't. I think there's some genuinely touching moments, but the film is sorely lacking in a strong, commanding lead. It could've been Angela Basset, but they put all their chips on the Leticia Wright train (who I like as a supporting presence, btw!) and she just can't carry this movie. I will also echo everything Andrew said above about Ironheart and the Thunderbolts set-up, it just proves once and for all Marvel is completely uninterested in making a fully realized movie. It's just never going to happen again. 

Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio (2022): I gotta do some work and see a lot more shit, but this might be my favorite movie of the year. I caught it in Los Feliz in Los Angeles and this movie really threw me for a loop. I didn't think I would ever give a shit about a Pinocchio movie, but it takes a real master to take a story you've heard a million times and find ways to make it fresh without ever betraying the source material. Easily the most visually exciting film I've seen all year...hot damn! If you can see this in a theater, do so!

Also, Ewan McGregor's Sebastian J. Cricket is an absolute delight and if you don't agree you're dead inside.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Steve: It'll surprise NO ONE that I fucking love Christmas. Because I'm a sap and a rube I deserve to be mugged at least once a year. As such, I have to agree with my new best buddy Adam, A Christmas Story is fucking Kryptonite to me. I just find the whole proceedings remarkably unpleasant. I don't need a cute saccharine Christmas movie every time (I love National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, for example), but the brown color pallet, the jowl-yJean Shepard narration, the screeching, sticky children, it's all too much. You all can keep it.

To keep on the Christmas horror recommendation train, check out Elves (1989) only if you want to find out about the connection between the elves and the nazis. Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Adam from Brooklyn, NY who asks: 

"Is there a holiday movie everyone else seems to like that you just don't dig for one reason of another? For me it's A Christmas Story."

Andrew: We covered this phenomenon on our episode of the film, but I don’t get the holiday cheer for It’s a Wonderful Life. I think it’s a great movie, but it’s a depressing-as-fuck film to watch around the holidays. So all those folks that line up to watch this around Christmas every year, yeah, psychotic stuff. As you may also guess from another previous episode, I think the Ron Howard Grinch is one of the worst holiday films ever, and a truly terrible film all around. So that’s another “holiday classic” I don’t get. But one of the biggest “I don’t get it” titles around this time of year is the Robert Zemeckis The Polar Express, one of the most terrifying, obnoxious, unsettling holiday films to ever come along. People who love that one should be put on a list. 

Chris: Not a fan of the blackface scene in Holiday Inn, but the movie itself is pretty good aside from that. Perhaps this is a bit obvious and trust me, it’s on the to-do list, but I cannot stand another single viewing of Love Actually that is not done explicitly for this show we do. It’s truly rare for me to be completely turned off by something that features so many actors I really love watching, but the schmaltz and sentimental goo is slopped out like movie-theater nacho cheese in this one and it drowns out everything else in the film, including Mr. Bean. I am clearly not the audience for this stuff but I am capable of noticing a movie that is good but does not work for me in contrast to a bad movie in a register I generally don’t enjoy, and Love Actually is very much the latter. And as a Christmas movie, it essentially goes directly against the meditation on humble, everyday blessings of family and friends that is meant to be the heart of the holiday, and yearns instead for the high drama of sex, megawatt romance, local stardom, familial strife and crisis, and career resurgence. Blech! 

Eric: I don't think this is a secret but I don't like Christmas. I don't like how everything about it feels like a transaction. I don't like how we do Thanksgiving, get together as a family, do the whole bit, but now must repeat it only one month later. It just seems stupid to me. Maybe combine them? Then you're really onto something: Christgiving, anyone? Thanksmas, no let's call it Thankchrist. Yes, it'd definitely be a Thankchrist situation. Anyway, now that we figured this out – let me tell you the answer to your question.I never made it more than 5 minutes into Elf. Nails on a chalkboard. I actually don't even like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the whole Rankin/Bass shit that much either, why? It's unsettling. Serial killer dolls. And I actually kinda liked A Christmas Story growing up but do see how it could be off-putting. I just really liked that fantasy sequence where the robbers wear striped pajamas.Instead this holiday season let me recommend you Christmas Evil and Silent Night Deadly Night. Those are holiday classics.

DECEMBER SCHEDULE 

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

Episode 646 —  Rocky V: Live from Philadelphia 

Episode 647 —  Avatar

Episode 648 — Christmas with the Kranks

Episode 649  —  Home Alone 2: Lost in New York with Chelsea Jupin

Patreon Episodes:

Patreon Exclusive We Love Movies — True Lies

Animation Damnation — An Elf's Story: The Elf on the Shelf

The Nexus: TOS: "Plato's Stepchildren" (s3 e10) TNG: "Allegiance" (s3, e18)

Gleep Glossary: Zam Wessell

Melr0210: 90210: "Baby Makes Five" (s2, e22),  Melrose Place: "Married to It"  (s2, e9)

Once in a Lifetime: A Christmas Prince* 

Synchable 4th Quarter Commentary: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets



Image Credit: Felipe Sobreiro

*We know, we know, A Christmas Prince is a Netflix movie, not a Lifetime movie, but that's purely an academic difference and we're stretching this month. We promise it'll be fun!

Find all this crap and enjoy it legally, just like we do! Now!

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 un-subscribing 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



Our Youtube Channel continues to kick-ass folks! That's where you can catch all the new WHM On-Screen Live episodes as well as see Eric Roberts' Cameo and so much more! We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. We also did a kick ass, STADIUM STYLE mailbag live for you folks! Eric has also put out great clip packages like Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David! Muppet Hitchcock Presents, Egg Lawyer, Lak Sivrak, the Wolfman of Star Wars, Michael Biehn at Comic Con, Loose Loomis, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboard episode! 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 like Big Bully, Ready Player One, Eternals, Saw III, and Resident Evil (2002). 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! 


Eric and Ben are back in the the Blame it on Outer Space Vault on the Hooked on TJ Hooker feed!  Check out this month's entry which is a classic ep about the moon landing! Listen here!  

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 great new designs in, and one of them is the new "Crispy Critters" design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill!  Also Felipe Sobriero has a fantastic and fun Demono's Pizza shirt any Hellraiser fan would love to have. We also have a ton of great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, 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 your incredible support this year and we hope to see you next year! 


Happy Holidays,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies