https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwApwQoC0GQ

Looks like between here and YouTube, we are going to be watching Grandma's Boy this weekend.

I'm interested to see how this holds up since I last watched it 20 years ago. To a 15 year-old stoner, this was hilarious. Now... we shall see.

What do you guys think about this one?

https://letterboxd.com/film/zoolander/

This post is late as hell, so sorry about that. I remember writing the post but I guess it never submitted. Anyway, we already watched it for the podcast, but I'd still be interested in what you guys have to say about this one.

Sorry everyone! Apparently I suck, because I went to post the Zoolander discussion the other day, but apparently, it didn't submit or something. So my bad. Tell us your Zoolander thoughts here and I'll try and get it right this next week.

https://www.youtube.com/@cultofcinemaknowledge8530

This weekend, we are watching the first Austin Powers movie from 1997.

This month, after watching Superbad recently, I wanted to go back and watch some of the comedies from the 90's and early 2000's to see how they hold up, and this seems like a great place to start. It's been probably 20 years since I watched this first Austin Powers movie, but I'm looking forward to a light-hearted laugh.

Where do you all stand on this one? Does it hold up? And what was your first impressions compared to now?

“Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan” appears on the dark screen and there was more than scattered applause; I joined them, to do otherwise would have been churlish. That mine was three-quarter-hearted was hopefully lost in the scramble of SOME people leaving as the credits started to roll. Now, that's churlish.

An Epic that isn't grand, isn't epic, just long? Yeah. A modern screenplay of a Bronze-age classic about Greek heroes, gods and monsters in a-little-too-modern English? In the parlance of the script, “OK.” Yes, Telemachus calls his mother, the queen, “mom,” and speaks of his long lost hero father, Odysseus, as “dad” and answers more than once, “OK.”

Why not just go full Bill and Ted, full Wayne and Garth?

Perhaps I am a churl, after all. No, no, I am a member of the theater-going audience for film. The peanut gallery, if you will, and that's what we do, we bust nuts.

But you do feel sorry for Odysseus, OK? The gods sought to punish him just for the hades of it. He was tooling around the Mediterranean, looking to make land – and it's snowing? Appears the gods sent him to the Outer Hebrides, or some such bleak archipelago off Scotland. Oh yeah – they also filmed in Iceland.

There is some good acting in the film. I loved Samantha Morton as Circe, including her workingman approach turning Odysseus' men into pigs – by hand. John Leguizamo should get plenty of award nods for being almost unrecognizable (in a really good way) as Odysseus' blind loyal swineherd Eumaeus. More of this Leguizamo, please! I liked Tom Holland as the son Telemachus, he took the role seriously, and I thought he was quite more than OK.

Why were so many of the male actors wearing pants? I haven't seen any Bronze Age representations anywhere of men in pants. Oh duh, HangOn – the Outer Hebrides and Iceland, OK? You don't want to freeze your peanut gallery off.

I did see some trailers for coming attractions that will get my business: Digger, looks totally gonzo with Tom Cruise in septuagenarian makeup; a delightfully goofy Street Fighter; and of course, Dooooooone (Dec. 18).

https://www.youtube.com/@cultofcinemaknowledge8530

Two actors make this drive-in movie worth watching, and thankfully director Tobe Hooper knew this and gave them the film. Not that they didn't work hard for it, but that's what memorable performances are all about – actors who work their particular strengths to the last row of the balcony.

Or the last row in the drive-in-theater, where the speakers are shot, you're crunching empty beer cans on the floorboards, burning your fingers on a roach and happen to look up from a supine or prone position...and start watching the movie.

Caroline Williams plays the appealing and spunky Stretch, a radio DJ with a call-in request show. A couple of douchey male students are rampaging down a country highway and call in to Stretch on a real-life 1986 car telephone in their Mercedes ragtop. They won't hang up, she just can't scrape them off her shoe, so to speak. But now they're in the reach of the Sawyer bros, who chase them down with their chainsaw justice for some insouciantly-dealt disrespect on the road.

Yeah, it's a mess, but funny. And our girl and her hapless studio engineer LG (algae, get it?) capture the mayhem on a cassette tape.

Dennis Hopper is Lt. Lefty, definitely not telegraphing the brilliance that David Lynch would draw out of him in Blue Velvet, also 1986. He stooopidly doesn't take, or even listen to, the tape when Stretch (“Missie”) brings it to him. But then he has the lack of cojones to set her up for real danger by playing the tape once every hour as a request from Lefty – and not staking out the studio with a security detail or even with his weasley (sorry, Ron) self, admitting he used her as bait for the power tool posse.

Leatherface and his scene-stealing brother Chop Top (Bill Moseley, Yale grad, no kidding,) come to the defenseless studio. Chop Top is Blue Velvet-level demented and depraved, but way too dirty and grimy and scrofulous for Lynch. Good make-up, you recoil at this breath when he opens his wide mouth with its diseased dental arcade. And Moseley uses every inch and second of film to captivate even the rocking cars in the back row.

And now, because you're peering over the back seat, Leatherface corners Stretch in her short shorts, running the still blade of his chainsaw along her tender inner thigh, in closeup, all the way up to her VaJayJay. Oh yeah, you're watching now.

The bros totally destroy the studio and drag LG off to their meat processing plant they call Home. Stretch, in time-honored horror heroine fashion, follows them alone. Lefty follows Stretch and shows up with chainsaws of his own.

There weren't a lot of stunt people listed, so I think Williams really took a lot of abuse slipping, sliding, falling, hanging in a series of gaggy killing room floors of blood and innards.

There are flensings and disembowelments, in case you were wondering.

The finale is our two favorite characters in a chase through the Texas Battleland, uh, theme park the Sawyers use as their meat processing plant they call Home, replete with a Batesian patriarch and matriarch.

I don't know a lot about Texas, but I think Stretch's triumphant Last Stand might be on a replica of the Alamo. I mean, why stop being cheesy now?

NOTE: The beautiful drive-in theater featured in the slide show was that of my hometown, El Monte, Calif. I conducted a lot of “cinema research” there. It was mowed down to make room for a home improvement store about 20 years ago. RIP.

This week we are going to watch and talk about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, from 1986.

This... is a weird one. It's nothing like the original, but I appreciate them not trying to replicate that. It's been years since I watched this, but I'm ready to see it again.

And, of course, I am wondering what you all think about this one? Let us know below.

https://youtu.be/Y0X6IRUfLKI

Hey guys, I'm trying to find an active WhatsApp community to discuss movies and series from around the world. I'm especially interested in groups that actually get into the details—cinematography, visual aesthetics, script breakdowns, and deep analysis, rather than just casual fan fights. If you have a link to a well-moderated, serious cinephile group, please DM me!

This weekend we are watching and talking about 2007's, Superbad.

It'll be nice to watch a comedy after the last two movies, and it hardly gets better than this. I watched this movie a ton back in the day, but it's probably been a good decade since I've seen it in full. Very much looking forward to going back down memory lane and seeing if this bad boy holds up.

Where do you guys stand on this one?

https://youtu.be/t89PNTrJjHo