The Cult of Matt and Mark

Is Luck an ephemeral 'thing' that can be swapped and stolen? Matt and Mark try to sort out the nuance of that question this week when we review Juan Fresnadillo's freshmen effort Intacto. Starring the venerable Max Von Sydow as the Luck Master, this visually stimulating film plays with its magic in such a way that may hide its truer reality. Dismissing its magical gimmick, Matt and Mark discuss the film in a practical context, for better or worse. Download: 054 Intacto by Juan Fresnadillo

"You're going to have to sell it sometime"... and for Elizabeth Berkeley that time was 1995 when Paul Verhoeven released the over-the-top NC-17 rated Showgirls. An exercise in off-color exploitation, Showgirls is viewed by many as not only a camp classic but also satire. What is it satirizing? Perhaps the feel-good "a star is born" tropes of Americana, hard to say, but one thing you can say is that 17 years on, people are still talking about it, which unlike most of Hollywood's endless parade of vapid offerings makes it worthy of at least a little discussion. Download: 053 Showgirls by Paul Verhoeven

A very gender neutral podcast this week as Matt and Mark review Neil Jordan's 1992 much talked about The Crying Game. While set in "The Troubles" of IRA political intrigue, its message about love and attraction is much more basic, yet altogether complex. Mark derides Matt for his soon-to-be antiquated old-timey prejudices and dares him to imagine a manly world where macho men still seek the company of their catamites, much to Matt's obvious discomfort. The Crying Game delves into our facades, with the overt not necessarily being the most malign. Download: 052 The Crying Game by Neil Jordan

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?" Oh Frank, such a quip from a demonic 6' tall rabbit. This week we enter Richard Kelly's tangential universe in the neo cult-classic Donnie Darko, starring the siblings Gyllenhaal. Despite perhaps an overly contrived metaphysical philosophy (which provides the basis for this genre-bender) Donnie Darko succeeds with its atmosphere. We are left to bask in its weirdness, a demonic rabbit, a dues-ex machina jet engine, and the truth that the world will end in 28 days. All of this combined with its nostalgic 80's high school setting somehow works, making it a thoroughly enjoyable film despite its calorie-free ending. Download: 051 Donnie Darko (Rebroadcast) 

Yippee-ki-yay, Mother F****rs, It's Christmas movie time! In 1988 Bruce Willis starred as the venerable John McClane in Die Hard, paving the way for a decades spanning action enterprise that refuses to *cough* die. A script loaded with one-liners, overly campy character archetypes, and a little touching sappiness to boot, Die Hard achieves what it set out to do: epitomize all that is 80's action. Bruce Willis would never be the same afterward and neither would we. Sparing us the stilted accent of Schwarzenegger and the punchy slur of Stallone, Willis offered us a "thinking man's" action star...or at least a coherent one. Download: 050 Die Hard (Rebroadcast)

We're all so money, and we don't even know it! This week we review the 90's zeitgeist 20-something indie hit Swingers, starring a young Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Ron Livingston and an ever beautiful Heather Graham. After his first viewing, Mark delves into the existential and the futile of what it is to be truly "money", while Matt embraces his inner Vince (aka Trent). With a heavy dose of 60's lounge nostalgia, Swingers is couched in the heydays of the past. But Mark's not buying any of that hipster crap. Stay dead Sinatra!! Download: 049 Swingers (Rebroadcast)

Revenge is a dish best served as a live octopus in a Seoul sushi restaraunt. Oldboy is a Korean psychological thriller from Chanwwok Park that exploits the idea of revenge to full effect. Where violence always takes the forefront in revenge tales (and there is a decent amount of violence in Oldboy) this film deconstructs the idea into a form of brutal shared empathy that gets to the heart of the vengeance concept. A mix of Hitchcock and Tarantino, smart and poetically objective, Oldboy is cinema that reinvents its genre. Download: 048 Oldboy by Chanwook Park

It's all about the fucking leads!!! This week Matt and Mark review the boiler room Mamet classic Glengarry Glen Ross directed by James Foley and starring a rock star "super group" of Oscar talent including Al Pacino, the late Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, and Kevin Spacey. Like a meat grinder, this film shows you what happens when you take the weak pulpy bits of human pride and process them through the steel teeth of capitalism. To be a salesman is to be an actor, a character fueled by seduction and confidence, and if your act isn't honed, as Baldwin's character Blake puts it, "You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, *you are* shit, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going *out*. " Download: 047 Glengarry Glen Ross (Rebroadcast)

"You lookin' at me? ARE you lookin at me?" ... is strangely the most quoted line of the gritty 70's New York City classic Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert Dinero. Armed with a skewed morality concocted from a lonely paranoid mind, Dinero's Travis Bickle embarks on a manic crusade to "clean the scum off of the streets." With an ending, nicely wrapped up with a bow, the director maps a path of violence from which redemption is achievable. Laying the groundwork for the Tarantinos of current cinema, Scorsese shows us the gutter and revels in it. Download:  046 Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese (Rebroadcast)

Auric Goldfinger (not to be confused with half-brother Agric Silverfinger or his developmentally challenged cousin Plumbic Leadfinger) conspires to ruin the financial world by once and for all taking the U.S. off the gold standard. Despite the ambiguous motivations of its characters, Goldfinger codifies the formula for all future Bond films. Sean Connery has long been regarded as the "best Bond", with this being the "best Bond film," although it must be said that Matt believes the one-off Lazenby film On Her Majesty's Secret Service is perhaps a little overlooked... just sayin'. Download: 045 Goldfinger by Guy Hamilton

Ha ha! ... he he he he I know you are, but what am I? A more tangential podcast than usual, Matt and Mark push the limit this week to review Tim Burton's directorial debut, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure starring Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) as himself... sort of. Besides the prepubescent smart aleck quirks of its main character, there's not much meat on the bones of this silly Saturday morning styled film. Like most skit comedy spin-offs, Pee-Wee is an extrapolated stage bit that has its moments, but few too many unfortunately. Download:  044 Pee Wee's Big Adventure by Tim Burton (Rebroadcast)

You're going down. This week we review the horror-comedy classic Evil Dead 2 by Sam Raimi, starring B-movie titan Bruce Campbell. Having seen the first Evil Dead, Mark fills Matt in on the complex back story of the original, without which, the viewer would be much like the protagonist Ash, merely a babe in the wickedly malevolent woods. Like an 80 minute live action Robot-Chicken episode, Evil Dead 2 is a late night stoner's paradise of gore, slapstick, and absurdity, a cult classic if there ever was one. Download:  043 Evil Dead 2 by Sam Raimi

Take a ride down the ladder! A drug induced hallucination of a dying mind or a transcendent spiritual epiphany? Matt and Mark have slightly different takes on whether or not it matters in Adrian Lyne's disturbing Jacob's Ladder, released in 1990. Tim Robbins as Jacob Singer gives an evocative and melancholy performance in this unique psychological film about the dying process; like death itself, it is not easy to watch. Worthy of note is Lyne's use of "thalidomide" inspired visuals and body-horror to create the film's demonic imagery. Download: 042 Jacob's Ladder by Adrian Lyne (Rebroadcast)

Welcome to Dante's Inferno (actually more like Dante's Purgatory), a state of early twenties Gen-X career/life dislocation summed up by Kevin Smith's lead character in his directorial debut Clerks, released in 1994. Matt pines for a Kevin Smith filmography that was never destined to be, while Mark embraces the Kev Smith career of the here and now. Clerks exemplifies Smith's talent for conversation, and as a result, has pioneered the podcast format of which Matt and Mark are merely standing on the hockey jersey'd shoulders of giants. Download: 041 Clerks by Kevin Smith (Rebroadcast)

Reliving the Japanese A-bomb nightmare via cathartic "monster movie" therapy, Japanese director Ishiro Honda made the culturally significant Gojira in 1954, a mere 9 years after the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (too soon?). While a silly movie, it's hard to deny its pop significance. Spawning 27 movie sequels, there just seems to be no end to the joy of seeing a guy in a foam rubber suit smashing up miniaturized cities. Gojira set a precedent for all disaster movies that followed, some better than others, some worse (Michael Bay, anyone?) Download: 040 Gojira (Godzilla) by Ishiro Honda (Rebroadcast)