Matt's Movie Lodgecast

Three boys ventured out into a cataclysmic rainstorm to tackle the appropriately waterlogged NIGHT SWIM, starring Kurt Russell’s son Wyatt and Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon. Did it scare our fins off or leave us cold in the shallow end? Dive in and find out!

Jason Statham is The Beekeeper. Requests were pouring in for us to cover this ridiculous action movie so we did. David Ayer directs and Kurt Wimmer writes (he also was one of the credited writers on Expend4bles). The movie features bees and honey and plenty of bee talk. Statham is an actual beekeeper on the property of Phylicia Rashad. When Phylicia Rashad gets fooled into a phishing scam and loses all her money she shoots herself. This sets Statham out on a John Wick-style quest for revenge. It left some Lodgers laughing and other Lodgers screaming, “Not the bees!”. The movie also stars Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, and Jeremy Irons!

Nicolas Cage recently turned 60! And just when you think he's done it all, he delivers yet another fantastic performance in a movie like Dream Scenario. This dark comedy by Norwegian film director Kristoffer Borgli stars Cage as a biology professor who starts appearing in random people's dreams and becomes famous. It's a wonderful setup for exploring the ins and outs of modern fame. It also stars Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Tim Meadows, Dylan Gelula, and Dylan Baker. Another winner from A24! See it!

Poor Things was one of the most anticipated movies of 2023, and it did not disappoint! It is another unique vision from director Yorgos Lanthimos and is currently nominated for 11 Academy Awards. Emma Stone stars in a bravura performance after she is revitalized by an eccentric surgeon played by Willem Dafoe. The cast is rounded out by Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jerrod Carmichael. It's a must-see!

For this episode, we ventured into new territory. We went to an AMC Screen Unseen mystery movie event. AMC Screen Unseen shows a movie that is coming out soon, but they don't tell you what it is. No one in the audience knows what the movie is until it hits the big screen! A cool idea from AMC, and at a price point of $5, our theater was packed. All we knew was that the mystery movie was R-rated, and that was enough to get us excited. We recorded an intro for this episode where we speculated what this mystery movie might be. Hear our reaction in real-time as we reveal this mystery movie to you and discuss it!

There was a Pet Sematary prequel that came out late last year! A prequel to the Pet Sematary (2019) remake, to be precise, which was a remake of the 1989 film based on the 1983 Stephen King book. So Bloodlines is a prequel of a remake of an adaptation that went straight to Paramount Plus. We covered the Pet Sematary remake way back in Episode 43 of the Lodgecast. Bloodlines scored a woeful 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, which sealed our fate that we had to cover it. This movie is set in 1969 and stars Jackson White as a young Jud Crandall who discovers the secrets of the cemetery. This movie stars some other heavy hitters, including Henry Thomas, David Duchovny, Samantha Mathis, and Pam Grier. The cast is rounded out by Forrest Goodluck, Jack Mulhern, Natalie Alyn Lind, and Isabella Star LaBlanc. While "sometimes dead is better," we're not ruling out future installments of the Pet Sematary franchise!

The Year of the Dragon is upon us! But before we get to dragons, let's get prestigious with Sofia Coppola's new A24 biopic Priscilla about Priscilla Presley. For this 'cast, we got the old Elvis (2022) crew back together to take a new look at The King from his wife's perspective. This movie is an adaptation of Priscilla Presley's 1985 memoir Elvis and Me. It stars Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi as Elvis. We came in with varying degrees of fandom for the films of Sofia Coppola and we left with varying bone counts!

And so we close out the year 2023 with Timothee Chalamet's Wonka. This is a new musical fantasy prequel to Roald Dahl's story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That 1964 book has been adapted twice: the classic version starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in 1971 and the not-so-classic Tim Burton 2005 remake starring Johnny Depp as Mr. Wonka. While this new Wonka movie didn't reach the dizzying heights of Cats (2019), there was still plenty of wacky musical fun to be had. The movie is competently directed by Paul King, who is famous for Paddington and Paddington 2. Wonka co-stars Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Natasha Rothwell, Olivia Colman, and Hugh Grant as Lofty the Oompa-Loompa. Join us for this special Minnesota-based Lodgecast as we inject the liquid chocolate deep into our veins! Wishing you all a wild and wonderful wishy-washy New Year!

Sean Hannity produced a Christmas comedy this year called Jingle Smells. The movie premiered on the video site Rumble, which is attempting to be a conservative version of YouTube. The premise involves quirky garbage men and canceled Christmas toys. It features John Schneider, Ben Davies, Eric Roberts, Victoria Jackson, James Storm, Jim Breuer, and, of course, Sean Hannity as himself! This one was bound to hurt even the most battle-hardened Lodgers. But we made it through to deliver this Christmas miracle episode to you! Merry Chongsmas and Happy Chongnukkah!

If you see one movie between now and Christmas Day, make it The Holdovers! We share our love for director Alexander Payne in this episode before snuggling in for a very cozy comedy starring Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa. Set in December of 1970, Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly teacher at a boarding school in New England. He is tasked with looking after the students who have to remain on campus for the holiday break for various reasons. Giamatti is a shoo-in for at least a Best Actor nomination in a hilarious role reminiscent of his great role in Sideways (2004). See this Christmas movie! With the whole family! Before Christmas Day if you can!

Director David Gordon Green returns to ruin another beloved horror franchise. After making three terrible Halloween movies that we covered, this time Gordon Green sets out to destroy The Exorcist franchise. We put off covering this for as long as we could but eventually had to face it. This wretched Exorcist sequel stars Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Olivia O'Neill, Jennifer Nettles, Norbert Leo Butz, and Ann Dowd. And Gordon Green even got 90-year-old Ellen Burstyn to reprise her role as Chris MacNeil. And for what, Mr. Gordon Green?! I'm getting angry just thinking about this movie! Hear our devastating takedown of The Exorcist: Believer. It will be followed by another terrible sequel called The Exorcist: Deceiver in 2025, and we will witness that atrocity as well!

Meg Ryan has a new movie out! It was in theaters for a minute, and we caught it. Meg stars in it and also wrote and directed it. It's a romantic comedy called What Happens Later and stars her and David Duchovny. They're exes who bump into each other at an airport. When their flights are delayed, they are forced to stay in the airport all night together. We'll let you know our history with Meg Ryan and if her new movie warmed our hearts or froze our souls!

Just in time for Thanksgiving, we slipped into a screening of Eli Roth's new slasher film Thanksgiving! This movie is based on the superb fake trailer from Grindhouse (2007). One year after a Black Friday sale goes awry and numerous people die, a John Carver-masked axe-wielding maniac is killing the citizens of Plymouth, Massachusetts. It sounds like a layup, but does director Eli Roth rise to the occasion?! Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, and Gina Gershon star! Happy Thanksgiving! If you enjoy our podcast, feel free to buy us a popcorn. We're on Venmo at @movielodgecast.

The second highest-grossing tour of all time is now a concert film at your local AMC theater! We weren't sure if we were gonna Lodgecast this one, but by the time we walked out of this 2 Hr. 49 Min. concert movie, we had some things to say. When we finally got to the AMC Burbank Prime cinema to see this, all the Swifties had apparently already watched it because we had the theater all to ourselves. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour unfolded before our eyes in ten acts (eras) from Lover to Midnights. We came in knowing little about Tay Tay's life or music, so we learned a lot. We found out the most popular, beautiful, richest girl in the world gets all she wants and all her dreams come true. Join us for our review of this musical adventure!

David Fincher's The Killer is dropping on Netflix! It received a limited theatrical release, so we had to catch it on the big screen at the Laemmle Glendale. The film stars Michael Fassbender as an ascetic assassin who sticks to his plans and never improvises. But when a hit job goes awry, he's forced to go on the run while killing off some loose ends. The script is by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, 8mm, Brainscan), and it's perfect material for Fincher, who directs the hell out of it. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provide the synth score. The cast also includes Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell, Kerry O'Malley, Sala Baker, Sophie Charlotte, and Tilda Swinton. Fire up your Netflix and watch it, and then hear our hawt take!

Director Martin Scorsese returns with a 3 Hrs. 26 Min. epic Western crime drama called Killers of the Flower Moon. We spent an entire Sunday confronting this motion picture in IMAX! It brings together Marty's two favorite actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, who haven't starred together in a movie since This Boy's Life (1993). Lily Gladstone also stars as DiCaprio's wife. The film is based on the 2017 nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, with a script by Eric Roth. In the film, the Osage Nation has struck it rich with oil on their reservation in 1920s Oklahoma, but a series of murders of Osage members is disturbing the community. Could Uncle Bobby De Niro and his nephew Leo DiCaprio be involved in the murders? We'll spoil everything in our review of this lavish $200 million production! It will be nominated for absolutely everything at the Academy Awards, so you should see it at some point. Prestige Season has begun!!!

Four boys with an extremely shaky grasp on the lore of the 10-film SAW franchise attempt to take on the latest installment, featuring Tobin Bell as Jigsaw in a way you’ve never seen him before! Prepare to be grossed out by this sick and twisted Hawt Take just in time for Halloween!

Those burly boys known as The Expendables are back almost a decade after their last outing in Expendables 3 (2014). We were definitely not going to cover Expend4bles, but then it scored a remarkably low 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, which made it essential viewing. The cast is getting downright geriatric, with a 77-year-old Sylvester Stallone, a 65-year-old Dolph Lundgren, and a 67-year-old Andy Garcia all trying to pull off some late-career stunts. Jason Statham does the heavy lifting in the action department, and he's lazily supported by Randy Couture, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, and Iko Uwais. This movie bombed hard for many reasons, which we will illuminate in this Hawt Take!

What up Stonk Kingz?! New movie out about Roaring Kitty AKA Keith Gill who took the apes to the moon with his WallStreetBet on GameStop. We'll tell you our retailer investor stories and how to invest your money, before we see this stonk movie. Paul Dano plays Stonk King Keith Gill, along with a stacked cast including Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, and Seth Rogen. While the dream of taking Dogecoin to $1 dollar have faded, we still have a glimmer of hope that one day AMC Theaters will be saved by the little guys like us. HOLD!!!

Earlier this year, a film was released called Hypnotic, directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring Ben Affleck. It was a major box office bomb with bad reviews and was only in theaters for a blink of an eye. But we caught a screening of it and, like hypnotized victims, we scarcely remember what we saw. Join us in examining our recollection of Rodriguez's head-scratching thriller. The movie also stars William Fichtner, Alice Braga, J.D. Pardo, Hala Finley, Dayo Okeniyi, Jeff Fahey, and Jackie Earle Haley.