We begin a new three episode series on Italian filmmakers and their depictions of fascism. We start with Luchino Visconti's 1969 film THE DAMNED about an industrialist German family and the depravity they engage in as they navigate a working relationship with the ascendant Third Reich. Discussion also includes:

• Homosexuality during the rise of the Nazis;

• The United Auto Workers who are suing Trump and Elon;

• Alachua County's efforts to divest from corporate interests;

• The Alien franchise and why it's great.

For our final episode discussing films about Ernest "Che" Guevara, we watched Walter Salles 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries, an acount of Guevara's eye-opening journey through South America that inspired the revolutionary ideals Che would soon bring to all of Latin America. Also: Other recent watches: Love Lies Bleeding (2024), Dune II (2024), Bones and All (2022), Jodorowsky's Dune (2013), and RATS! (2024); packing the supreme court; Craig celebrates a personal achievement;p and vanguardism and its importance to a revolution.

Hal and Craig watched Steven Soderberg's Che: Part Two (2008), chronicling Che Guevara's time fighting in the Bolivian Revolution and his eventual capture and execution. Discussion also includes:

• Craig's recent trip to Chicago (lots of Cubs and White Sox talk!);

• The Black Panther Cubs and Fred Hampton's legacy of community action;

• Hal's letterboxd list of movies about artistes; 

• Our recent movie watches: IN A VIOLENT NATURE (2024), MARAT/SADE (1967), SLAVE PLAY. NOT A MOVIE. A PLAY. (2024);

• Why the Bolivian Revolution failed, where the Cuban Revolution did not.

Hal and Craig watch Steven Soderbergh's Che: Part One (2008), chronicling the life of Argentine Revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his time leading guerilla fighters in the Cuban Revolution. Discussions also include:

• Kendrick Lamar's Pop-Out Concert;

• Yorgos Lanthimos' new film KINDS OF KINDNESS;

• Paul Schrader and his sad, broken men;

• Hal breaks down some troubling new legislation regarding SNAP benefits and food access;

• Book talk! (TENDER IS THE FLESH by Augustina Bazterrica & WHEN THE CLOCK BROKE by John Ganz)

It's the final episode of our series The Reds, White, and Blue, looking at films about the red scare and a fear of a communist menace. This time, Hal & Craig watched Armando Iannucci's (Veep, In the Loop) satire "The Death of Stalin". We discuss Stalinism, how it diverges from Leninism, and whether or not the film is an effective satire. Discussions also include:

• Some new movies we've been watching: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Last Stop in Yuma County, Monkey Man, and Unfrosted;

• The recent tornados that swept through the American southeast;

• A look at last year's anti-union legislation passed in Florida; and

• What makes effective satire?

We continue our series on the Red Scare with Phillip Kaufman's 1978 adaptation of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" starring Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, and Jeff Goldblum. In our previous episode, we discussed the machinations of the Red Scare, and in this episode we talk about the paranoia and lives ruined in the wake of the Communist Panic. Discussion also include:

• The Kendrick Lamar v. Drake beef;

• The continued crackdown on Pro-Palestenian college protests;

• Irving Adler, a communist math teacher, who stared down the House Un-American Activities Committee;

• Weird right-wingers finally found the cure for wokeness: Sydney Sweeney.

In this episode, Hal & Craig discuss John Frankenheimer's 1962 political thriller THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, and Janet Leigh and the cynical, political use of a vague Communist Menace. We discuss the history of the Red Scare, the legacy of McCarthyism, and the lives upended in its wake. Discussion also includes:

• Craig finally watched Hal's favorite movie: Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS;

• Our favorite right-wing moron, Steven Crowder, is still having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day!;

• Good news on Florida's terrible Don't Say Gay Bill;

• We read (and laugh at) Armond White's 2023 Better-Than List.

We welcome Daniel Harper and Jack Graham, co-hosts of the excellent anti-fascist podcast I Don't Speak German. We watched Spike Lee's incendiary 2018 thriller BlackKklansman. We discuss the history of the Ku Klux Klan, Hollywood's complicity in its rise, and Spike's reckoning with making a quasi pro-police film. Discussion also includes: David Duke's bizarre die and exercise regiment; the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Virginia and Daniel and Jack give us an update on the rally's most notorious nazi dorks; the harrowing sound editing of Jonathan Glazer's THE ZONE OF INTEREST; and can there be a movie about cops that isn't copaganda?

Hal & Craig watched EARTH MAMA, the debut feature from writer-director Savanah Leaf. Discussions include: the United States’ history of using Child Protective Services to police low-income and black Americans; the OSCARS (we talk OPPENHEIMER, Lily Gladstone vs. Emma Stone, and Jonathan Glazer); we celebrate Hal's birthday by discussing their favorite directors; and our favorite films from A24.

Hal & Craig watched John Sayles 1987 film Matewan. The film, starring Chris Cooper and James Earl Jones, tells the true story of the fight between West Virginia coal miners and union busters whose tactics grow increasingly more violent. Discussions also include:

• Aaron Bushnell and his remarkable protest against Palestenian genocide;

• Hal's new obsession THE FLOOR, the Rob Lowe hosted game show;

• Our recent watches: Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Barry Lyndon, and The Lighthouse;

• Anti-union violence and America's history of union busting.

Hal and Craig discuss high-risk activism and the 2022 thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline (dir. Daniel Goldhaber). We also discuss:

• The end of the Vince McMahon era of professional wrestling;

• The Insance Clown Possee (WHOOP! WHOOP!) and their fight against the FBI;

• The misogyny of the police, as seen in Netflix's AMERICAN NIGHTMARE;

• Jonathan Glazer's new film THE ZONE OF INTEREST; and

• The effects of successful high-risk activism.

In this episode, Hal and Craig discuss Steven Soderbergh's Traffic and its perspective on the War on Drugs, as well as our favorite Soderbergh films. Discussion also includes: the new king of hip-hop: Ben Shapiro; Craig accidentally watched a Christian horror movie; Steven Soderbergh at the forefront of new cinematic techniques; movies with large ensemble casts and multiple plot lines; and our recent film watches, including THE LAST DUEL, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, SOCIETY OF THE SNOW, and THE DAMNED.

We wrap up our series on the films of S. Craig Zahler with perhaps is least palatable film DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE. In the 2018 crime thriller, Zahler focuses his increasingly fascistic lense on the issue of........police brutality (oof!). Starring Mel Gibson (double-oof!) and Vince Vaughn, Zahler's brand of gritty celluloid violence goes full-mask off and asks the big questions like: Why can't cops beat up whoever they want? Conversation also includes:

• Craig complaining about baseball;

• Hutton Gibson, Mel's nazi-sympathizing, conspiracy-enthusiast father.

• Joe Biden's renewal of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act; an

• We discuss our recent watches including BODY DOUBLE, THANKSGIVING, SALTBURN, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.

On this week's episode, we're switching up the format and doing a 2023 Review Show! Hal and Craig list their favorite films and performances of 2023. As well as discussions about their favorite first time watches (of non-2023 films) and favorite non-film media of 2023. And we discuss the not-so-good of 2023 and break down some of our least favorite movies of the year.

In this episode, Hal and Craig discuss colonialism by way of Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, an innovative film that delves into Algeria's National Liberation Front and their bloody battles against French colonizers in the 1950s. Discussions also include:

• New movie roundup: MAY DECEMBER, SATAN WANTS YOU, and EILEEN;

• How French Colonialization depicted in Battle of Algiers is an eerie parallel to America's colonial interests in Iraw and Afghanistan;

• Alabama’s exploitation of the labor of incarcerated people;

• Elon Musk's doomed efforts to stand down Swedish labor unions; and

• A really weird garage sale where Craig bought all of Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire" books.

We continue our series examining the films of S. Craig Zahler and their increasingly bizarre depiction of a violent, conservative "utopia/dystopia". This week we watched BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, Zahler's attempt at a prison exploitation flick starring Vince Vaughn, Don Johnson, and Udo Kier. Also: we celebrate the death of Henry Kissinger, one of history's greatest villains; upcoming movies we're geeked for: THE IRON CLAW, THE SWEET EAST, POOR THINGS, and FERRARI; the Daily Wire has released an anti-trans comedy called LADY BALLERS (or based JUWANNA MAN); and what makes an exploitation film an exploitation film?

We're talking labor unions! Hal and Craig watched Barbara Kopple's HARLAN COUNTY, USA, the ground-breaking 1976 documentary chronicling the struggles of coal mine workers in Harlan County, Kentucky as they fight against coal barons, police, and scabs in an effort to join the United Mine Workers of America. Discussions also include: abortion rights winning at the ballot; weaponizing the Civil Rights Act against student protestors; a round-up of our recently watched films: The Killer (2023), The Flash (2023), Serial Mom (1994), and The Conformist (1970); and the state of labor unions in Kentucky today.

We celebrate our 1 year pod-iversary by beginning a new series of conservative films, specifically the violent fantasies of S. Craig Zahler. We begin with Zahler's directorial debut Bone Tomahawk, a western-horror starring Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins, Matthew Fox, and Patrick Wilson. Zahler has a stylish eye and works well in genre conventions, but what lies beneath this horror western is a lot of tired tropes painting native tribes as inhuman. And we start tracking the different types of Manly Men in the Zahler-verse. Discussion also includes: Scorsese's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON; under-appreciated mensch David Arquette; Traditional vs. Revisionist westerns and; some of our favorite moments from our first year of podcasting!

Hal & Craig discuss Bill Gunn's 1973 film Ganja & Hess and how its the perfect allegory for the nightmarish world wrought by post-colonialism. In addition, we discuss how the film was nearly lost to the sands of time and Sam Waymon's (who also stars in the film) incredible, haunting score. Also: Craig watched some bad Frankenstein adaptations; Hal's undying love for Suspiria (2018); Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire are making a Snow White movie; and the Scholastic Book Fair capitulates to anti-LGBT morons.

Spooky season continues with Bernard Rose's 1992 film Candyman. There's a lot to discuss! Hal and Craig break down how Candyman inverts the racist trope of the "savage brute". In addition, we look at Candyman's deft analysis of Chicago's Cabrini Green housing projects and how Candyman himself is a creation of White America whose pain tends to reverberate mostly in black communities. Discussions also include: Craig consoling himself after a disastrous baseball postseason from his beloved Tampa Bay Rays; Hal and Craig's recent concert experiences (Beyonce and Run the Jewels, respectively); Tony Todd's ability to pull of terrifying and sexy at the same time; and Hal's slate of recent viewings: Saw X and Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.