Alternate Ending - Movie Review Podcast

The Alternate Ending podcast was born on 3 January 2016, when the husband-and-wife team of Rob and Carrie Jarosinski shared their picks for the top 5 movies of all time. The site and the podcast have both seen a lot of changes since then, and we're taking this moment to look back over all the changes the decade has witnessed here at Alternate Ending, and in the wide world of movies overall. Such a special topic deserves a big sprawling all-star treatment, so Tim is joined by four other members of the Alternate Ending podcast family to take a walk down memory lane: Bride of Alternate Ending's Brennan Klein, Mandy Albert of Your Movie Rocks, Brian Fowler, and Cameron Shaw. Together, the crew talks about the site's history, our favorite moments from the podcast, and more, including Tim's review of the 2006 fantasy film Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses, by request of Patreon supporter Kyrie.

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it. To kick off the second year of the show, Mandy welcomes Alternate Ending regular Brian Fowler, who has tasked her with watching the movie Spiral - not that one, the other one. No, the one from 2007 that virtually nobody has seen or heard of. The one starring The Hottie & the Nottie's Joel David Moore. Just how many souls "virtually nobody" actually means is one of the main topics of discussion between Mandy and Brian, as is Brian's steadfast belief that this is actually a pretty special psychological thriller, and he wants more people to hear about it. Will Mandy agree with Brian's warm assessment? Listen to find out!

We come to the end of another month, and that means it's time for a preview of the movies to come! February is looking just as chilly as January, movie-wise, but that's not going to stop Brennan, Cameron, and Andrew from finding the bright-looking spots in the release schedule, which turns out to be a bit more wild and weird than it seems from the outset. For this week's movie roundtable, Andrew finally catches up with 2018's black metal biopic Lords of Chaos, while Cameron raves about current Oscar hopeful Sirāt, and Brennan sees the less awards-friendly sudsy thriller The Housemaid.

Tim and Brennan take a look back on 2025 by covering a sequel to one of the movies they discussed last year, 1998's THE DENTIST 2: BRACE YOURSELF!   Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

January is a rough, wintry month for the movies, but one of the bright spots is that it means the arrival of the Sundance Film Festival. And the Alternate Ending crew is taking this as a good opportunity to celebrate the life and career of Sundance founder - among many other highlights - Robert Redford, who died in September 2025. Tim is joined by Caleb Wimble and Zev Burrows for this deep dive into the acting, directing, and general good deeds of one of the last great movie stars. Before turning to discuss Redford, the trio shares three films for our movie roundtable: Caleb brings the current awards hopeful Sentimental Value, Zev travels to 1955 Japan for the punishing character drama Forever a Woman by director Tanaka Kinuyo, and Patreon supporter M.C. Steffen assigns Tim the ludicrous Christian propaganda film/courtroom thriller Suing the Devil.

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it. The first year of Your Movie Rocks ends on a very special episode, in which Mandy is joined by her former student Ali Roberts (@deranged_hands on Instagram), now a film student and filmmaker. And, it turns out, a tough player of the YMR game, assigning Mandy the appalling-looking direct-to-video animated feature Life's a Jungle: Africa's Most Wanted. But by God, Mandy will find the good and the beautiful about this ungainly piece of Madagascar-sploitation, and have a great time doing it.

As 2025 winds down, the cold and bitter specter of a January that's unusually barren of even the usual kind of January new releases rears its icy head. To help weather this winter storm, Brennan Klein is joined by Brian Fowler and Caleb Wimble as they find whatever they can to sustain themselves until the spring. Plus, they've decided to forego the usual movie roundtable in lieu of a tribute to the late Rob Reiner, whose passing earlier in December came as such a shock to the film world. Join us in celebrating an estimable filmmaking career on this year-ending episode of Alternate Ending!

Tim and Brennan fill one of Tim's 2025 horror blind spots by discussing the long-awaited sequel 28 YEARS LATER!   Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

This week sees the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash, the tenth narrative feature directed by James Cameron, and that seemed like an auspicious enough number to use it as an excuse to celebrate. Alternate Ending's resident Avatar maniac, Tim Brayton, is joined by a trio of fellow Cameron-heads: Zev Burrows, Andrew Milne, and Caleb Wimble. And the four of them dilly-dally for as much time as Ol' Jim himself might do in going over his directorial career, and some of his other interests, culminating in our picks for the best films of his slender but massively popular filmography. As a warm up, the team has an all-2020s movie roundtable this time: Caleb sees Oscar hopeful tearjerker Hamnet, Andrew raises and then crushes our hopes with the samurai drama Tornado, Zev puzzles around with Yorgos Lanthimos's newest weird fiction, Bugonia, and Tim deals with one of the decade's most confusing distribution platforms to see Kurosawa Kiyoshi's 45 minute filmlet Chime, by request of Patreon subscriber... Caleb Wimble. Well

'Tis the season for an viewing diet unhealthily dominated by ugly sweaters, fake snow, and immaculately trimmed prop Christmas trees, and the Alternate Ending gang is celebrating by bringing Tim and Brennan together to discuss something other than horror cinema for a change. They're joined by terrible Christmas movie expert Cameron, and the three of them are sharing their thoughts - or in Tim's cases, confusions - on the omnipresent modern holiday movie genre, slick and cheesy romantic comedies made by Netflix, Hallmark, Lifetime, and other fine purveyors of shameless cinematic comfort food. It's a holly jolly time on this very special episode of Alternate Ending!

For our extremely special December episode, Mandy is joined once again by Andrew Milne, who has assigned her the horror-scifi-absurdist-quasi-Dante-epic Despiser (2003), a movie that is so very many things all at once that it trying to describe it can leave one flailing and floundering like a starving artist who just woke up in purgatory.  Fortunately, Mandy and Andrew have brought another guest along on this wild ride through the digital effects of the late 1990s, and he is probably the most qualified man in the world to talk about Despiser, because he's Philip J. Cook, the writer/director/producer of Despiser. Join Mandy, Andrew, and Phil as they discuss Phil's roller coaster of a filmmaking career, the relative merits of different approaches to special effects, why Phil has a vendetta against troll dolls, and what kinds of magic can happen when filmmakers refuse to be hindered by little inconveniences like having no money. You can back Phil's new project, Echoes of Dread, here. You can snag a copy of Andre

To wrap up November, as is customary, we're looking ahead a month, as Brennan is joined by Cameron Shaw and Brian Fowler for our preview of the films coming out in December 2025. The wintry fun begins with the current and former Midwesterner joining forces to explain to Brennan the hellish phenomenon of "lake-effect snow". And then it's time to look at the very strange offerings of the last month of the year, such as a meta-remake of Anaconda and a Neil Diamond singalong that isn't actually about Neil Diamond. They also try to give the absent editor Tim a heart attack by saying some very mean things about Avatar: Fire and Ash, but there's plenty of other potentially interesting things to dig into. Prior to popping open the release calendar, the team has a movie roundtable, with Brian finally catching up to 2017's The Babysitter, Cameron visiting the highly-anticipated new Frankenstein by Gullermo Del Toro, and Brennan check out the second big Stephen King film of the fall, with the new adaptation of The Runni

Tim and Brennan conclude the Autumn of Blood by making an appointment with 1992's DR. GIGGLES!   Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

We've been sitting on this idea for a while, but with Chloe Zhao's Oscar hopeful Hamnet opening this month, it seemed like as good a time as any to finally move forward with one of the biggest topics a film podcast can tackle: big-screen adaptations of the work of Elizabethen/Jacobean playwright William Shakespeare, the most-adapted writer in film history on top of being the most famous name in the history of both English drama and English literature. Such a grand subject deserves a bigger crowd, so this week, Tim is joined by no fewer than three Alternate Ending regulars: Gavin McDowell, Brian Fowler, and Caleb Wimble. Together they discuss what makes a good Shakespeare movie, what we should do with adaptations that discard the original text, and why there are such a disproportionately high number of good Macbeths. Before the main event, our regular movie roundtable covers a wide range of movies, as wide as the number of genres good old Billy S. touched on his career: Brian has caught up with Black Phone 2,

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it. For November's episode, Mandy invites her colleague Inara on to discuss a subject about which Mandy knows practically nothing: cube-based videogame Minecraft. And more importantly, what happens when filmmakers try to convert those cubes into characters for the feature-length A Minecraft Movie, which remains at the start of November the highest-grossing film of 2025 at the U.S. box office. Come for Mandy's bafflement at what there is to this universe beyond "cubes", stay for her emerging theory of good stupid vs bad stupid in art.

The last Tuesday of the month means it's time for our previews of coming attractions, and to greet the first month with actual for-real blockbusters in a long time, Brennan is joined by Andrew Milne and Gavin McDowell. And while Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2 are destined to be two of 2025's biggest box office successes, what the team really wants to do is go long on Hamnet, and the nature of making films about William Shakespeare's life and art. Those and other November releases are all covered in the episode, but before that happens, the trio shares their catastrophic picks for a movie roundtable: Gavin with the racist, sexist, and homophobic 1968 crime picture The Detective, Andrew with both parts of Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon in their extra-length director's cut form, and Brennan with the brand-new comic disappointment Good Fortune.

As the Autumn of Blood continues, Tim and Brennan munch on 1991's POPCORN! Donate to Brian Fowler's GoFundMe here! Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

October 13, 2025 marked the 75th anniversary of the premiere of the Oscar-winning classic All About Eve, which the Alternate Ending crew decided made for a perfect excuse to revisit one of the most remarkable face-offs between two evenly-matched masterpieces in cinema history. In this corner: Eve, the caustically witty dark comedy about backstabbing and ageism in the world of legitimate theater. In the far corner: Sunset Blvd., the lacerating film noir about madness and ageism in the world of motion pictures. Two of the medium's most iconic female lead performances, top-tier screenplays by two of Hollywood's most celebrated writers... even if the team can't pick a favorite, it's a pleasure just to get to luxuriate in the presence of these two icons. To discuss the highs and... higher highs of these two classics, Tim is joined by Cameron, and Brian, and not least Zev, whose idea this was in the first place. Before getting to the main showdown, Cameron shares her thoughts on the new must-see cinephile bait, Pa

For this bonus episode of the Alternate Ending podcast, Tim is once again joined by film scholar Will Quade, author of the recent article "We Accuse: Antisemitism and Historical Remembrance in the Films of the Dreyfus Affair" published in The International Journal of the Image. They're here to discuss the remarkable path to distribution of the controversial 2019 Roman Polanski film An Officer and a Spy, which has only just received a North American release in the fall of 2025. Together, they explore questions of the conflicting politics driving the film's delayed release, the conflicting politics within the film itself, and the reasons why the film itself forces a reckoning with the complicated and unpleasant questions it raises.

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There’s only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it. For October's episode, Mandy is watching a movie about a bunch of people in funky costumes haunted by the specter of death: no, not a horror movie, the notorious 1967 Beatles fiasco Magical Mystery Tour, thanks to Beatles fan and regular Alternate Ending podcast guest Cameron Shaw. Together, Mandy and Cameron try to figure out what the hell was going on with this shoot, what the hell was going on with the Beatles, and really just what the hell was going on with the 1960s, while also contemplating the ineffable beauty of 16mm semi-professional cinematography. And Cameron finds time to share some deep lore about Tim's prehistory. Roll up, step right this way, and give it a listen!