Thanks, Academy!

We skipped out on the 4-hour director's cut and opted for Kevin Costner's 3-hour theatrical juggernaut, the movie that launched a thousand bloated Kevin Costner epics and put a hard stop on Hollywood's one-sided treatment of Native Americans. While Trish and I weren't qualified to really examine the racial politics of the story, as a movie, it holds up better than many Best Picture winners of that era (or this one) and does provide some real drama, mainly thanks to the animal actors. It's good to be back! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm joined by 2019's Funniest Person in Austin Andrew Murphy and his brother Alex for a family tag team fresh look at this notoriously sappy gloss through the Baby Boom generation's childhood. The movie surprises us with how dark it is when you peer just beneath Robert Zemeckis's thick layer of Vaseline. But our darkest revelation is that Forrest Gump himself is The Problem with modern America -- his obliviousness standing in for white America's fantasy of a Great Again America that clearly didn't exist and Forrest is singularly unprepared to cope with. Of course, in the movie, Forrest has some sort of unspecified mental deficiency. America should have no such excuse for its own Vaseline gloss of what happened. There are two types of Americans -- those who remember this as a problematic movie portraying a series of atrocities, and those who remember it as a feel-good family heart-warmer. The latter are in charge. Enjoy your shrimp joke. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This movie did not play into our worst fears -- it's not war propaganda, it has redeeming and surprisingly strong female roles, and it contains more than a few genuinely entertaining scenes with good acting -- but it's still way too long for the extremely thin plot it's hung on. Basically a slice-of-life for three types of World War II veterans dealing with PTSD, we get yet another terrible protagonist, long and dull scenes of people not growing and changing, and ... I ran out of things. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

At one point, Asaf calls this the 1920's version of Fast & the Furious, and he's absolutely right. Despite being a 2-and-a-half hour silent movie, there's plenty to watch: real airplane dog fights, male nudity (really), female nudity (really!), lesbians on a date (really!!!), men kissing each other (REALLY!!!!!!), and brutally realistic trench warfare filmed on the actual battlegrounds of World War I. But don't rush out too quickly to watch it, because it also features the least heroic "hero" I've ever seen. We go on at length about why the second fiddle, David, should have been the protagonist instead of lame duck Jack. Loads of fun, and nice to finally get the OTHER Best Picture silent film checked off the list. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hunter and I had less than zero idea what we were in for, which turns out to be easily the most misogynist musical we've ever seen. Even allowing for the '50s, and allowing for the setting of France, and allowing for the conventions of musicals, this film goes out of its way to reiterate, in every way possible, that women are objects with no complex emotions or agency over their lives. Nice hats and dresses, though. I didn't think it would be possible to be 110% furious at a movie just one week after blowing my top at "Green Book," but here we are, wallowing in disgusting scene after disgusting scene. It turns out to be pretty hilarious. Enjoy! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is an excellent example of how to be tone deaf in 2019. In a year when African-American filmmakers and actors dominated both the box office and the awards shows, this white-bread corn muffin of a throwback warms over a '90s approach to race relations and passes it off as drama. Not only are the racial politics of the movie incredibly obtuse, the story itself is an inert slog of a literal road trip through a neutered Deep South. Pair this up with "In the Heat of the Night" and the contrast between gritty realism and this film's fantasy land is STARK. What's more remarkable is the former is fiction while this is massaged from supposedly true events. We hated it. We hated it so, so much. Thanks, Academy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

One of the most celebrated films of all time ... only works if you're inherently interested in the Italian mafia. That's the conclusion we came to in this blockbuster episode that also covers ninja moves, Trump's posture, Christmas, and other junk. Sometimes the magic of two people watching a famous movie for the first time is ... not a magical response. Still, there's hope for the sequel, I guess. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It feels weird to be surprised by this, but what a good movie! Turns out the most celebrated play of all time, when handled with straightforward care and interpretation, is a pretty damn good tale. There is the requisite amount of stilted 1940s acting, but all-in-all, it delivers what a Hamlet version has to -- you can follow the dialogue and plot -- and there's some pretty spicy meatballs thrown at us -- incestuous kisses, actually scary ghosts, unexpected comic relief. Erica takes a break from the basement of Amazon Prime with her podcast "Customers Also Watched" to revisit her English teaching days and check out this brilliant take on being or not being. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mike Wiebe drops by to watch a 3-hour+ movie about opera, but we had a great time because the movie's themes of jealousy, mediocrity, petty revenge, and sex / drugs / rock-n-roll struck a deep chord inside both of us. Definitely one to tune into if you've ever dwelt in that uncanny valley between talented and hack-like (in other words, every comedian ever), or seen someone younger than you achieve and exceed you through no visible effort whatsoever. Also, lots of Star Wars references somehow. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gene Kelly should have won for "Singin' in the Rain," probably the greatest movie musical of all time, but the Academy blew its wad the year before on this outing, which was pretentious enough to be Best Picture material, but not nearly as entertaining and full of, dare we say it, problematic relationships. By "we" I mean my fellow ladies of Weird Brunch (a storytelling podcast about odd shit, subscribe to it), who lend the more professional recording setup to the first episode recorded outside the famous vampire den. It's three ladies watching an old musical, and we had fun, as you'd expect, but all it really did for us was make us wish we were watching "Dirty Dancing." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For our halfway point, I searched high and low for someone who would be able to watch this movie with NO knowledge of what's going on, either from the reading the books or seeing other adaptations. JJ fit the bill perfectly, and with a rule in place that he could ask a maximum of 5 questions about what's going on, we set sail on an endless journey to get to damn end. For this epic episode, I included the entire 30-minute slow motion ending sequence uncut, so you can hear us slowly go insane as it stretches on, and on, and on. Is the movie any good? Is that even the point? What's the point of this project anymore? Should we throw this podcast into the cracks of Mount Doom? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is easily the most intense episode of the podcast to date, matching the tone of this relentlessly graphic movie. Roxy and I are both sensitive, but we share a defense mechanism of humor that we use to keep each other from falling apart during the more excruciating sequences. We laugh a lot out of sheer desperation, but at times, the movie's overwhelming power kills even our spirits. It's a great, great film, and one I hope I never have to watch again. Tune in for the avowedly inappropriate quips, the screams of terror and anger we let fly, and the ultimate conclusion that Nazis must die, all of them. For this one, sincerely, thanks, Academy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is easily the most action-packed Best Picture we've watched yet, with car chases, shootouts, stakeouts, and all the primal elements of a cops-and-robbers movie. There's a freshness to it, though, a sense that the genre was being invented before our eyes with no conventions yet in place, no holds barred, no squeamishness from the ugly truths about either side. Gene Hackman is simply fantastic as the mostly-loathsome Popeye Doyle, and the direction by William Friedkin is unforgettable. Is all of this lost on Enzo, who has only seen 25 movies in his whole life? Not exactly, though he feels a bit overwhelmed by the experience. If you enjoy hearing people get blown away by a movie in real time, this episode's for you. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Join me and Zac Brooks for the first-ever drunk episode, as we stumble through this cheesy '80s movie about race that's also somehow not at all about race. "Driving Miss Daisy" is a pleasant enough confection, and miles less offensive than other more recent confections (like "Shakespeare in Love" or "The Artist"), but lacks any deeper heft than emotional manipulation. We spend most of our time just trying to figure out why Dan Aykroyd was in this, how the fact that he is in this didn't tank the movie completely, and what in the world he did to deserve an Oscar nomination for the role. Turns out, the whole year of 1989 was a buncha Forrest Gump-style feel good movies, so was this the best of the bunch? It probably wasn't the worst. And hey, everyone deserves to just relax and enjoy themselves sometimes. Crack open a cold one and count the number of times Zac and I accidentally say inappropriate things. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is a movie that now feels like a fairly mediocre network television drama. There must have been something positively sparkling about it in 1983 when it won practically every award out there, but aside from one or two iconic Jack Nicholson scenes and a handful of good lines, this is a plain old ramble of a movie through a standard divorces-and-dates plot. It does end with cancer, which must account for its reputation as a tear-jerker, but Mac and I were not moved to much beyond confusion. The most difficult part is just figuring out WHEN the movie is taking place, with confusing time jumps and visual cues about era that are way lost on a 21st century audience. Not a bad movie, but definitely not a barnstormer in its old age. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This Bing Crosby vehicle shoehorns in several chances for the crooner to croon, but in a neutered way since he plays an oh-so-saintly progressive priest sent to save an old New York parish from the crotchety ministrations of its elderly founder. Bing proves he's better at everything than everyone, winning competitions at such things as checkers, golf, singing, piano playing, priesting, baseballing, slang talking, and $10 giving. The plot is essentially "Sister Act" but without women. Some truly bizarre things happen in this movie, which knocks us for a knickerbocker loop, and in the end Brett and I go just insane enough to invent musical duo sensation Musk & Menthol. Don't miss it! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Another '40s drama, another barn-burning polemic on societal ills. This time, it's Gregory "Atticus Finch" Peck in his younger days solving anti-Semitism by posing as a Jewish journalist. While JT and I find and express every possible way in which that is an uncool thing to do, the movie still succeeds as an emotional gut punch to the American dream as a restrictive clause for WASPs only. This time, the endless moral debates were fascinatingly relevant. It's impressive just how 2019 some of the "this is how to be an ally" speeches are. Not a movie you'd enthusiastically recommend with a bowl of popcorn, but a rightful classic that deserves to be better-remembered today. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Oh boy, oh boy, a movie about a lawyer having a dumb argument with an idiot. The story of Thomas More vs Henry VIII is not without its charms and intrigues, but you wouldn't know it from this dull plodding Kodachrome movie that feels like a cheap community theater edition. The acting is mostly dull, the script is nigh unintelligible, and the visuals are ponderous and unhelpful. That just leaves the debates. Lots and lots of debates. On the one hand, there's a bit of a Mueller vs Trump vibe going on, but on the other hand, no there isn't, because Thomas More comes across as a cold, narcissistic, psychopathic nincompoop who tossed away his loving family in the service of winning (losing) a Facebook comment thread fight. And we don't even get to see his head chopped off. Boo all around. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What a strange movie. It combines truly delightful cheesy Broadway song-and-dance numbers with some of the darkest human misery and bleakest human behavior possible. The movie feels aimed at kids sometimes, with the chipper children engaging in Bednobs & Broomsticks-style hijinks, and at other times ... well, we're not sure who the audience is for domestic abuse being justified by the abuse victim, but that's in there, too. Melody returns and we sip some tea and practice our bad cockney accents for 2-and-a-half hours. We don't quite go insane, but it's close. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We were supposed to watch 3-hour Mozart marathon "Amadeus," but couldn't find a legal copy to stream, so we quickly rolled the dice again and landed on this recent winner about the Boston Globe's expose of the Catholic church's worldwide conspiracy to aid and abet child abuse. As a former newspaper reporter (and ex-Catholic, thanks to this very Globe series), this was like candy, watching a team of journalists slowly and methodically uncover one of the biggest news stories of all time. For a movie about paperwork, it's astoundingly riveting, and the acting is nothing short of phenomenal, as understated as it is. Lea'h and I also get into how much has changed about exposes in just the 16 years since this movie took place (heck, even in the 3 years since this movie came out) thanks to #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. We also talk about silly stuff. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.