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© Martini Giant 2022
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Martini Giant loves movies like you love movies. Three industry professionals, Chris Nichols, Daniel Thron, and Erick Schiele gather biweekly to talk obsessively about their favorite films, share insider stories on moviemaking, and drink some mighty fine cocktails. In this podcast, there's no kind of film we don't love, and everything is on the table from Infinity War and A Star is Born to Alphaville and Eraserhead. So if you like your opinions served up as strong as your drinks, then sidle up to the bar, my friend, and enjoy the expertly mixed, lovingly crafted hot takes of Martini Giant.
146 Episodes
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James Mangold loves westerns - in fact, his own remake of 3:10 to Yuma is arguably even better than the original. So when decided to take on his first franchise superhero movie, he knew exactly what film to use as a guide! Tonight MG compares his X-men saga Logan with the classic that brought him inspiration: Geoge Stevens' foundational western, Shane!
With Goodfellas, Casino, Killers of the Flower Moon, and many more, Martin Scorsese has changed the course of the crime genre multiple times - and with each reinvention, has inspired a new generation of filmmakers. But what are the crime movies that inspired him? Tonight we compare his breakout hit - Mean Streets - to one of his all-time favorites: Jimmy Cagney's gritty melodrama The Public Enemy!
The Big Lebowski and True Grit have cemented Jeff Bridges' position as one of the greatest character actors in the history of film. But early in his career, he took some wild swings as he tried to figure out what kind of roles fit him best! Tonight we look at two of his strangest, most interesting choices - a pair of imperfect but intense thrillers that no ingénue would dare take on today: Cutter's Way and Winter Kills!
Alex Garland has always been on the forefront of sci-fi - exploring the future of technology in Devs, reinventing the zombie genre with 28 Days Later, questioning our basic identity Annihilation, and debating the nature of consciousness in the MG favorite Ex Machina. But his latest might be his most relevant and upsetting work yet - and certainly his biggest. Join us for his unnerving vision of Civil War!
Whether it's wrestling or boxing, nothing conveys the brutality of the ring like film does - from Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight to Darren Aaronofsky's The Wrestler. But few have ever made it more terrifyingly tactile than Scorsese did with Raging Bull - and even fewer have made it more emotional than Sean Durkin's The Iron Claw! So join MG tonight as we take a look at these knockouts!
The list of Hollywood movies that roast Hollywood excess is a long one, with bona fide classics like Sunset Boulevard at the top of many critics all-time lists, and scrappy indies like The Big Picture throwing tomatoes from the cheap seats. But for our money, you'd be hard-pressed to find a one-two punch better than tonight's double feature: the Coen Brothers' love letter Hail Caesar! and Robert Altman's poison-penned The Player!
It's Chris' and Daniel's birthdays, so get ready to clutch some pearls! Tonight we have a hand-picked double feature that's both obscure and offensive! First up, if you thought Get Out Your Handkerchiefs was going to get us canceled, wait till you see Gérard Depardieu in Going Places! After that - if you're still watching - get set for the inappropriate, insane mess of Gene Hackman's Eureka!
Prior to Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Oscars tended toward stately, serious picks. But now we see stranger and more daring fare creeping in - so tonight MG looks at how the Daniels' started clearing this path with their beautifully low-budget epic Swiss Army Man; and look at where it's led us - Emma Stone's Oscar win for her role as the wild Bella Baxter in Poor Things!
By now, we're used to the Coen Brothers' penchant for goofy comedy, from the musical massacre in Buster Scruggs to the suggestive Navy dance number in Hail Caesar. But Blood Simple, their debut film, had been a grim, Sundance-friendly noir - so in 1987, no one suspected their sophomore effort would turn out to be a slapstick classic! Join MG as we take on Raising Arizona!
AI's surprising growth has many people feeling nervous about the future - so tonight MG takes a look at two of the best in a long line of cautionary tales about renegade robots! First up, Alex Garland's Ex Machina, about a very strange and dangerous Turing test - followed by the groundbreaking original version of Westworld from Michael Chricton, the master of theme-parks-gone-wrong!
From Pasolini to Mel Brooks, there's little that we at MG love more than films that offend the tender sensibilities of mainstream culture. And rarely has mainstream culture been more in need of offense than today - so tonight MG takes on a movie that has Twitter clutching its pearls: Emerald Fennell's Saltburn!
Beginning with 1954's Gojira, Toho Studios' Godzilla series went on to become one of the most beloved franchises in movie history - and over the decades, it's been many things: sometimes political, sometimes silly, sometimes scary. But with Godzilla Minus One we can now add...profoundly emotional? Join us as MG crowns the new King of the King of Monsters!
David Fincher has long been on the cutting edge of the killer/thriller genre, reinventing it many times over his career with classics like Se7en, Zodiac, Mindhunter, and Gone Girl. But with his latest Netflix-backed effort, he both cuts new ground - and, in a weird way, gets back to basics: join us as we look at The Killer, and its classic inspiration, Le Samouraï!
AI rising up and conquering humanity has been the subject of hundreds of films from Westworld to The Terminator - but tonight we feature a couple of films that suggest reality will be more insidious than that! Join us for the little-known 70s time-capsule Colossus: The Forbin Project, followed by Spike Jonze’s chatbot-gone-rogue love story, Her!
With the betrayal of Watergate and the release of the Pentagon Papers, America in the 1970's was a haunted, disillusioned society, and much of that stress can be seen in the films of the period. But MG argues that, even in a decade that brought us Apocalypse Now and Three Days of the Condor, no director was more plugged into this paranoid zeitgeist than Alan Pakula! Join us for his twin masterpieces, Klute and The Parallax View!
For decades, John Wayne's westerns created a vast mythology of America's early days that papered over historical truth in favor of heroic white male ego-fantasies. But towards the end of his career, two films stand out wherein he questions these narratives and his role in them - join us as we take a look at his masterpiece The Searchers, as well the Coen Brother's reinterpretation of his classic True Grit!
Disney spent 350 million making the pretty-fun Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and 288 million making the downright awful Black Widow. But even though the combined budget of tonight's double feature wouldn't have covered craft service for those movies, each packed to the brim with incredible concepts and beautiful images. Join us as we talk about Gareth Edwards' Monsters and Brit Marling's Another Earth!
Happy Halloween from MG! Tonight, pour yourself a nice pumpkin spice martini and cozy up to our Exorcist double bill! First up is William Friedkin's 1973 masterful original, featuring a decade-best performance from Ellen Burstyn as a possessed kid's beleaguered mom - then we follow it up with the film's second (and darkly comedic) sequel, Exorcist III - directed by the book's author, William Peter Blatty!
Jake Gyllenhaal has had an incredible career, working with a wide range of directors from Ambulance's Michael Bay, to Okja's Bong Joon Ho, to Zodiac's David Fincher. But two filmmakers in particular saw him as more than a great actor - they saw him as a muse, and built movies around his unique voice. Join us tonight as MG takes on Richard Kelly's iconic Donnie Darko and Denis Villeneuve's underseen Enemy!
Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach have teamed up on a number of 'learning-to-be-real' stories - and their collaboration went global this year with the year's undisputed megahit, Barbie. But MG argues that while it might not be in the billion-dollar club, their actual best team-up sits comfortably beside a defining classic of the genre: join us tonight for our pod on Frances Ha and The Graduate!
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