FEAR AND LOATHING IN CINEMA

Certain milestones demand champagne. Others demand a collective cry for help. For our 150th episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, the four of us, pestering podcasters marooned in Texas, chose the latter and marked the occasion by revisiting the 1997 cinematic curio The Pest. The post Episode #150 – The Pest (1997) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

By the time we arrived at Episode #149 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, Gerarduary, the sacred month in which we collectively reflect on the brawny altar of Gerard Butler was breathing its final, heroic breaths, we chose to close it out not with subtlety or restraint, but with Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003). This is a movie whose title alone sounds like it was generated by shaking a box of rejected Dan Brown novels. This is not to be confused with Cradle 2 the Grave, a distinction worth making if only to reassure listeners that Jet Li will not be drop-kicking anyone through a stained-glass window. The post Episode #149 – Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #148 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, the four of us are still trapped in Gerarduary, which is our month-long cinematic endurance test disguised as a tribute to Gerard Butler. Texas, in solidarity, has chosen this exact week to become the Arctic. The power grid is nervous. We are bundled up. Spirits are high. Because if you’re going to freeze, you might as well do it with a British gangster movie blasting through your living room. The post Episode #148 – RocknRolla (2008) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #147 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, we find ourselves still lingering in January of 2026, a month that has overstayed its welcome and thus demanded a rebrand. We now call it Gerarduary, a ceremonial observance devoted to Gerard Butler. He's the cinematic Spartan who has spent the last two decades shouting his way through global catastrophes with admirable lung capacity. The post Episode #147 – Geostorm (2017) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On our first Fear and Loathing in Cinema episode of 2026, we do what any sensible group of adults would do to welcome a new year. We consecrate January to Gerard Butler. Or, as it will now be known in perpetuity, Gerarduary. This is not a bit so much as a lifestyle choice. And what better way to kick things off than Dracula 2000, the movie that announced Butler to the world with the subtlety of a leather trench coat snapping in the wind as the titular character. This was a film greenlit less because of artistic necessity and more because someone, somewhere, apparently said, “It’s called Dracula 2000, what more do you want?” History is complicated like that. The post Episode #146 – Dracula 2000 (2000) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

The end-of-the-year episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema has arrived, like a tipsy friend barging into your living room on December 31st with a notebook full of opinions and absolutely no intention of keeping them to themselves. This isn’t an episode devoted to a single film so much as it is a cinematic reckoning or a long look back at the movies we saw in theaters in 2025. The post End of Year 2025 Awards first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

Here we are again, gathered for our annual White Elephant episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, a tradition in which Bryan, Dan, Preston, and Chelsea select a movie and secretly foist it upon another unsuspecting co-host. Historically, this exercise has had a fifty–fifty chance of devolving into chaos of a nude and possibly indictable nature. But 2025, like so many strange years before it, surprised us. We went classy. Civilized, even. This development was especially alarming given that it runs directly counter to Bryan’s personal brand. The post White Elephant 2025 first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode No. 145 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we set out with the mild intention of having a civilized conversation and immediately abandon it. Bryan, Preston, and Chelsea welcome director Todd Rohal, making his inaugural appearance, and, if we’re lucky, not his last, just as his new film, Fuck My Son, is busy lodging itself permanently in the cultural memory. Or, depending on your disposition, another nearby mental filing cabinet. The post Episode #145 – Electroma (2007) with Todd Rohal first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode No. 144 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the three of us reunite like a ragtag crew of slightly overcaffeinated jewel thieves to conduct a meticulously unplanned heist of your ear holes. Our target? The 2018 film Ocean’s 8, that all-women-led sequel/spin-off/reheated-leftovers entrée of the Ocean’s Trilogy. The post Episode #144 – Ocean’s 8 (2018) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode No. 143 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we four self-appointed munchkins, each of us barely tall enough to see over our own opinions, link arms, step onto the yellow brick road, and march straight into the emerald wreckage that is Wicked: For Good. What follows is less a film discussion and more a group therapy session conducted at a brisk, panicked trot. The post Episode #143 – Wicked: For Good (2025) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #142 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we pack our khakis and emotional baggage for a journey deep into the heart of Africa, by way of Hollywood’s wildest pet detective. Yes, we’re talking about Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, the sequel that taught us all the difference between bat guano and comedic genius. The post Episode #142 – Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #141 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, there are, depending on how many voices you hear in your head, two, possibly three people who dared to confront The Number 23, Joel Schumacher’s 2007 cinematic thriller of numerology, noir, and naked Jim Carrey angst. Yes, that Joel Schumacher. You know, the maestro behind The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and the Batman movie that introduced us to the concept of heroic rubber nipples. He was a man of texture, you might say. The post Episode #141 – The Number 23 (2007) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #140 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, three brave souls click their ruby slippers and tumble, not into the glossy green hell of the Wicked franchise, but straight into the cracked, nightmarish cobblestones of 1985’s Return to Oz.Forget show tunes and moral lessons. This Oz comes courtesy of Walter Murch, the editing-and-sound-design sorcerer behind The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, who decided, just once, to direct a movie. And what a delirious, unhinged, possibly hallucinogenic masterpiece it turned out to be. The post Episode #140 – Return To Oz (1985) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #139 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, four brave digital explorers, Bryan, Dan, Preston, and Chelsea, once again jack into the pixelated abyss to revisit Tron: Legacy, Disney’s 2010 attempt to convince us that glowing spandex and motorcycles could carry emotional weight. It’s an apt time for such a quest, what with Tron: Ares now zipping into theaters, promising that Jared Leto, of all people, can lead us through the next neon apocalypse. Because if there’s one thing this franchise teaches us, it’s that humanity’s greatest error is trusting any man in a long leather coat. The post Episode #139 – Tron: Legacy (2010) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #138 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, five people who still refuse to let their phones listen to them take a deep dive into one of Hollywood’s most prescient nightmares about technology,  S1M0NE, or Simone for those of us who haven’t updated our operating systems since 2002. The post Episode #138 – S1MONE (2002) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #137 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four cinematic sperms finally find their egg, and what an egg it is. The year is 1994. America is wearing denim on denim without irony. The internet is a rumor. And somewhere in Hollywood, Ivan Reitman, the comedic alchemist behind Ghostbusters and Twins, asks a question no one dared to voice aloud. What if Arnold Schwarzenegger got pregnant? Enter Junior, a film that was marketed as a comedy, played like a fever dream, and aged like a fine bottle of prenatal vitamins. The premise? Danny DeVito plays a fertility doctor (of course he does), and Arnold plays a scientist who injects himself with an experimental serum that results in, well, a baby bump. What follows is part sci-fi absurdity, part heartfelt melodrama, and entirely unhinged. The post Episode #137 – Junior (1994) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #136 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four of us Green boys decided to lace up our metaphorical combat boots and enlist, not in the Marines, but in the 1995 Damon Wayans comedy Major Payne. For some of us, this film has long been chiselled into the granite face of the Comedy Mount Rushmore, somewhere between Airplane! and Blazing Saddles. For others, namely Chelsea, the podcast’s resident conscientious objector, it was a first deployment. The post Episode #136 – Major Payne (1995) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On Episode #135 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, four cinephiles who, for the episode, style themselves as podcasting pornographers. They slip into something more comfortable this week with Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008). It was Smith’s answer to the Judd Apatovian moment, when Seth Rogen was America’s schlubby leading man and every joke was equal parts weed, sex, and sentimentality. The film, ostensibly about making a porno, was really about making rent, something even ghosts in haunted houses can relate to these days. The post Episode #135 – Zack and Miri Make A Porno (2008) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On episode #134 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four superhero sidekicks that is Bryan, Dan, Chelsea, and Preston, voluntarily subject themselves to Superman III (1983), the cinematic equivalent of doing whippets in a RadioShack parking lot. This is the movie where Christopher Reeve, once again donning the cape, finds himself paired with Richard Pryor. Arguably the funniest stand-up comedian of all time and, according to Warner Bros. executives in 1982, also the perfect person to anchor a family-friendly superhero sequel. The result? A film so spectacularly unhinged it feels less like a continuation of the Superman franchise and more like someone dared the writers to lose a bar bet. The post Episode #134 – Superman III (1983) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.

On episode #133 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the squad piles into the back of a cop car with Martin Lawrence and Luke Wilson to revisit Blue Streak (1999), a film that now feels like both a time capsule and a comedic piece of nostalgia. Remember when buddy action comedies reliably paired the world’s stiffest white guy with the loudest, most cartoonish Black guy, and then had them bicker their way to justice? Simpler times as they would say. The post Episode #133 – Blue Streak (1999) first appeared on Boomstick Comics.