Behind every great villain is… frankly, well, often there’s another bigger villain pulling the strings. But the truth is, while we often celebrate “the big bad” some of the most interesting villainy comes from the lieutenants that the hero meets along the way to facing the big bad. Sometimes, these henchmen might even eclipse the…
Author: Josh Stroud
e420. 2026 Summer Movie Preview
It’s summer! Ok, maybe it’s not quite summer summer, but it is summer movie season as the U.S box office. There’s a lot of movies coming out this summer, but honestly not that many franchises. So, how do you decide what to see? On this episode, Mav, Hannah, and Maybe are joined by returning guests…
e412. The 2026 Oscars Prediction Special
The time comes but once a year… Hollywood’s biggest night! Or so they say. Actually, for as long as we have been doing this show, almost every year Hannah and Mav have to beg people to come and talk about the Oscars because almost no one is ever interested. Well, this year is different, we…
e404. Stranger Endings: Breaking Down the End of Stranger Things
For some reason Netflix, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the proper way for everyone in the world to spend their winter Holidays of American Thanksgiving through Christmas and New Years was to focus on concluding the — wow… ten year — Stranger Things saga. And somehow, even with all of our various holiday things…
e384. From Vanderbilt Glam to Oscar’s Shades: The Gilded Age Deep Dive
In 2022, a show premiered on HBO that was perhaps tailor made for us. The Gilded Age was a 1880s period drama from the creators of Downton Abbey with sexual and gender politics, racial dynamics and a treatise on the invention of class dynamics, all thrown together with a collection of Broadway’s finest actors in…
e363. Is The Mummy a Bad Movie?
We’re a pop culture analysis podcast. As such you’d think we’d analyze a lot more movies than we do. Maybe we should do more. That’s a question for another day. But every once in a while we realize that one of the hosts of the show absolutely adores a move that maybe isn’t as beloved…
e320. Adrenaline and Affection: Exploring the Action Romance Genre
What do you do if you’re in couple that was designed on an 80s sitcom so you have extremely traditional gender roles of a feminine partner who loves lovey dovey chick flicks and a masculine partner violent ‘splosiony dude movies. You go to an action romance of course! So it turns out that we don’t…
e253. So… Is Princess Diaries 2 a Bad Movie?
In 2001, Disney released the film adaptation of the YA novel The Princess Diaries, starring Ann Hathaway and launching her career on a trajectory that would eventually earn her an Oscar. However, before she got there, she’d make a sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, a film with… somewhat less acclaim. However, the second…