Magellans at the Movies

Sand. According to the modern Shakespeare it’s coarse, rough, irritating, and gets everywhere. Those of a similar mind should probably avoid the sun-blasted wastes of Arabia, where the dust is plentiful and the cleansing water rare. The only thing that could make these unforgiving deserts worse would be a web of train lines and bridges used by the Ottoman Empire to move supplies and troops to their various fronts in the first World War. We don’t have to worry about these days, however, thanks in part to the exploits of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, a young British officer who embedded himself in the Arab revolt to assist in the rebellion’s efforts against the Turks. Thanks to a wildly successful P.R. campaign and a vividly written autobiography, Lawrence became a household name and was eventually memorialized in Lawrence of Arabia, a 1962 historical epic directed by David Lean. Lawrence of Arabia is a grand, sweeping film of jaw-dropping scale and scope, the kind of ambitious realization of an imposing historical legend that has largely fallen out of favor in modern Hollywood. Today, then, let’s dive back into the pages of history alongside this illustrious film to see how it’s all aged. Into the desert, my friends!

Why are we doing this? Descriptions written by Elliot

Indiana Jones. He’s one of the most recognizable film characters of all time. The whip, the leather jacket, the revolver, and of course, the fedora, all combine to create the adventuring archaeologist's famous silhouette, but Indy’s appeal isn’t all superficial. He’s just a well written, charismatic, Nazi punching hero played with predictably smooth aplomb by Harrison Ford. The franchise didn’t exactly leave us on a high note in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but a brave group of filmmakers have been assembled to try to bring Indy back in the form of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a 2023 adventure film directed by James Mangold. Dial of Destiny has suffered from a conspicuously troubled development, plagued by reshoots, poor test screenings, and a general atmosphere of suspicion and outright hostility from significant chunks of the fanbase. Now that it’s here, has Lucasfilm managed to pull a rabbit out of their battered brown fedora? Crack that whip and let’s find out!

Everyone has bad days from time to time, yes, even if you live in Australia (five bucks if you get that reference). Your car won’t start when you need to be at work early, the AC breaks on the hottest day of the year, or you accidentally switch lives with your evil long lost twin on your wedding day thus throwing your entire future into uncertainty as you try to convince the police that it’s a coincidence you look exactly like the drug kingpin they’ve been hunting for the past two years. The thing about these troublesome scenarios is that we’ve all been there, we can all relate to them, but we should still spare a thought for the people going through more outlandish just-one-of-those-days days, people like the boys in blue facing down endemic political corruption and violent criminals while trapped in quite literally the most disgusting, poorly maintained apartment complex to ever house human beings. Such is the fate of the central cast of The Raid: Redemption, a 2011 action sleeper-hit directed by Gareth Evans. The Raid is most well known for its chaotic, balletic, bone-crunching action, directed and overseen as it was by stuntmen and choreographers who designed every aspect of the film to either incite, support, or showcase the movie’s fast-paced fisticuffs. Pretty much everyone who sees The Raid finds something to be impressed in it, but Nathan hasn’t seen the film before, so it’s time to put that axiom I just made up to the test. Move in!

Antiquities are a niche interest. People collect relics from the past to learn about how people once lived, how they occupied themselves, and the kinds of comforts they could enjoy. For many people, perusing gilded mirrors, dusty phonographs, and hideous cushions in a poorly lit store on your local town square constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, but some artifacts defy age and become entrenched in our daily lives for all time thanks to their enduring viability. The same is true of movies, especially when it comes to Casablanca, a 1942 film directed by Michael Curtiz and source for most of your grandparents’ references. Casablanca takes place on obvious sets, was filmed during World War II, and its entire cast smokes enough to be two days away from a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, and yet for all its superficial seniority, it has stood the test of time for the simple reason of being a doggone masterpiece. Casablanca is achingly romantic, its characters are eloquent yet understated, and its powerful cast deliver career-defining performances, and today, thanks to a request from one of our loyal listeners, Magellans at the Movies will be gushing about it. Here’s looking at you kid, now let’s jump in!Magellans at the Movies: the Blog (magellansatthemoviesblog.blogspot.com)

In the great pantheon of stuffy old late-19th century British authors (for which the middle school English teacher is the most devoted evangelist) perhaps no other member has had their works adapted more often or in more mediums than Jane Austen, chronicler and critic of polite society in England. Austen’s books have weighed down many an American student’s backpack, but we all know that it’s easier to just watch the movie and then cobble together your report from that, so if you’ve recently been assigned Pride and Prejudice, may we recommend director Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation as a substitute? You can knock it out in two hours, you can look at your phone while it’s playing, and best of all, after you’ve squeezed a thousand words out of your half-remembered experience you can listen to today’s episode of Magellans at the Movies! That’s right folks, today we’re buckling our shoes and dusting off our epaulets because we’re going to the only place with a higher concentration of emotional repression and undiagnosed nervous disorders than that which can be found on the internet: Victorian England! Disclaimer: failing to adhere to the clear parameters of school assignments is wrong and is not officially endorsed by Magellans at the Movies Inc. or any of its affiliates.

It’s the waning days of World War II and Nazi Germany is in a bad way. The Allies have squeezed them out of Africa and Asia and have begun pushing deep into Europe. Berlin is being slowly suffocated by the Red Army of the Soviet Union and the American and British forces are not far behind. A setting like that usually calls for a grand, explosive film about the heroic Allies delivering the final, decisive deathblow to the exhausted Axis, but director Oliver Hirschbiegel decided to take things in an altogether more unique direction with Downfall, his 2004 character study of the infamous Adolf Hitler’s last days as he flails for some kind of military miracle from the tense confines of his bunker. Downfall is a German film told from the perspective of Hitler’s real-life secretary Traudl Junge, and made the somewhat unpopular decision to meet its detestable characters on their own terms, making an earnest attempt to understand how people ally themselves with evil. In the end this approach paid off and Downfall enjoyed heaps of well deserved praise for its stellar performances and tragic depiction of what Hannah Arnedt called the banality of evil. We’ll do our best to keep things lighthearted, but stories like these don’t exactly lend themselves to knee-slappers, so slap some patches on your suit’s elbows and light your pipe because Magellans at the Movies are diving into the pages of history.

It’s hard getting old. There’s the usual complaints: things like weakening bodies, fading memories, and the looming shadow of death, but getting old also means seeing things change. McDonald’s starts selling breakfast all day, they make the capes for LEGO figures out of cloth instead of paper, and everyone and their grandma wants you to scan a QR code to access their business even though I don’t have my phone on me and why can’t I just talk to a real human to sort out my order I just don’t get-wait, what was I talking about? Well, anyways, you see things change as you get older and you may not like what you see, especially if you’re an aging Sheriff tracking an increasingly violent game of cat and mouse being played between an unassuming everyman on the run with stolen drug money and a murderous hit man hired to kill him and retrieve the illicit cash. At that point you’re living in No Country for Old Men, a 2007 neo-western directed by the Coen brothers and based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, and brother, you do not want to be living in that movie. That’s because No Country is dark, somber, and violent, but if you can watch the film rather than inhabit it, you’ll enjoy a peerless crime drama with career-defining performances from the likes of Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones. I honestly can’t say enough good things about No Country for Old Men; it’s tense, brilliantly shot, perfectly paced, and endlessly thought-provoking, and it also happens to be Elliot’s favorite movie, so get ready for some truly breathless stuttering monologues about the deconstructionist roots of anti-romanticism in neo-westerns or whatever. Nathan’s there too, I think. Lace up your cowboy boots and check the money for a transponder and let’s hit the road!

Welcome to Los Angeles, the seat of the American film industry! Here you can learn about astronomy at the Griffith Observatory, see the Pacific from the L.A. Boardwalk, and walk across the greats of moviemaking on your way to the TLC Chinese Theater. And of course, no visit to the city of angels would be complete without a glimpse of the Hollywood sign, keeping its steady watch over the humble borough of tinsel town. L.A. has been mythologized almost as much as New York City, and as such has become a beacon for throngs of dreamers hoping for a chance to be discovered and catapulted into stardom. These glossy, candy-colored dreams are the lifeblood, central appeal, and indeed raison d'etre of movies like La La Land, the Damien Chazelle directed 2016 musical and subject of that one famous Oscars snafu. No, the other one. No, the one without the aggravated assault. La La Land is more than just a flashy bit of Hollywood ego-stroking, however, it also endeavors to be a subtle romance about the conflict between personal fulfillment and the pursuit of relationships, the ultimate mendacity of the Hollywood dream, and the pain and questions of the road not taken, bolstered by a pair of stand out performances. La La Land is such a cinematic treat that it fought its way through the frankly overflowing catalog of movies Nathan has seen to claim top honors as his favorite, so now that everyone’s hopefully had time to get over their No Country For Old Men-induced existential crisis, let’s all pep things up a bit with this melodious matinee. Shine your dancing shoes and grab a partner, hit it!

The world is full of stories. Legends and larks abound across the globe, from Eastern European folk tales, to the plays of ancient Greece, to the ongoing storylines of MMOs like Destiny. Some of these tales are inevitably swallowed by the content machine of Hollywood and end up on the silver screen, but in a world as rich with fables as ours it is equally inevitable that a great many deserving stories slip through the cracks and remain chained to the page or the historical record or the PC. Today, then, Nathan and Elliot are sounding the call to the deaf ears of tinsel town, bringing to their non-attention and your vaguely detached attention a selection of their favorite fictions or nonfictions that have yet to be blessed by the fickle attention of the modern media landscape. Grab a pen and get ready to have your reading list inflated because the Magellans at the Movies are talking about movies once again, only this time movies that don’t exist. Sounds like fun!

An epitome is a person or thing that is the perfect example of a particular quality or type. The nuclear bomb is the epitome of manmade destructive power, McDonald’s is the epitome of nothing, Magellans at the Movies is the epitome of movie podcasts, etc. Sometimes the classification of something as an epitome is more controversial than others, but when it comes to Westerns, few would argue against The Good the Bad and the Ugly’s status of the perfect example of this type of movie. Directed by master of the spaghetti western Sergio Leone in 1966, this three hour behemoth of a film cemented the tropes of the genre and provided a much lauded conclusion to the dollars trilogy, while also showcasing Clint Eastwood’s most famous rendition of The Man With No Name. TGTBATU, as it’s informally known, is so gargantuan in scope and scale that the Magellans at the Movies needed to call in an extra set of hands to tackle this cinematic cornerstone, leading to today’s special guest A.J. Arnold! Stick a toothpick in your teeth and throw on your duster because it’s time to giddyup into today’s episode!

Everyone feels a little crazy sometimes. Maybe the guy in front of you in line at Burger King seems to be dealing with the concept of a menu for the very first time. Maybe everyone is showering praise on a film you just don’t like. Or maybe you’re having vivid dreams of your dead wife interspliced with flashbacks to a traumatic experience liberating the Dachau death camp at the end of World War II. If so, you may seek treatment at a mental health institution, but, uh-oh, it’s only 1954 and that means standards of care at asylums are . . . uh, let’s say substandard. Especially if the facility in question is the one featured in Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s 2010 psychological mystery-thriller. This gothic institution for the criminally insane may seem benevolent at first, but soon you’ll hear whispers of illegal experiments, people being lobotomized for asking too many questions, patients who come into the care of the island and are never heard from again. With the stage ominously set, a pair of federal marshals come onto the scene for a tense, foreboding offering from its famous director, bolstered by a strong cast and reliably excellent direction. Shutter island wasn’t a smash hit with critics, but audiences loved it for its dense atmosphere and stellar performances, and, at the request of one of our loyal listeners, the Magellan brothers were more than happy to take a look at one of Scorsese’s lesser loved movies. Duck the strait-jacket wielding orderlies and don’t take anything they give you, because all is not as it seems!

James Bond is undoubtedly one of the most iconic characters in all of fiction. Based on a series of novels by Ian Fleming, ever since the 60s our theaters have never been long without a sharply dressed, smooth-talking womanizer saving the world from all manner of eccentric criminals and sinister clandestine organizations. Despite being British through and through, James Bond’s appeal has spread to all corners of the world with his quirky gadgets, witty quips, and-how shall I put this?-strained relationship with what international subterfuge actually looks like. Every generation has had their own Bond, and his canon, tone, and cast of characters has remained remarkably consistent across his nearly three-quarters-of-a-century run, and since Nathan recently decided to see what all the cultural fuss was about, we’ve decided to take a look at the inception of our own incarnation of James Bond with 2006’s Martin Campbell directed Casino Royale. Casino Royale acted as a kind of soft reboot for the character, taking him back to his first big mission against an evil, uh, accountant, in the intense, action packed arena of . . . um, a high-stakes poker game in a private hotel lounge. Thrilling stuff. Anyhoo, shake those martinis and straighten those bow ties because Magellans at the Movies are going in. What’s that? Do I expect you to have read this entire thing? No, listener, I expect you to have gotten bored and started the episode!

I think one of the benefits of living in a post-lockdown era is that our time cooped up indoors has made us more sensitive to the dangers of cabin fever and the limits of a familial or friendly bond. You may love your child more than breathing, but there’s nothing like constant proximity to make you realize just how irritating the way they eat truly is. Unfortunately for the folks living in The Thing, the 1982 science fiction horror classic (based on The Thing from Another World which in turn was based on the short story Who Goes There? by John Campbell Jr.) directed by John Carpenter, their position in the Antarctic wastes in the dead of winter makes it much more difficult to go outside and unleash a cathartic scream of frustration. Compounding their tension is the tendency of their fellow man to be taken over by an alien parasite, transform into grotesque abominations that would make your average Resident Evil boss a bit queasy, and do their darndest to ensure you suffer the same fate. No amount of team building exercises and group movie nights can surmount that relationship hurdle, I’m afraid. Still, it’s not all loss because their suffering is our enjoyment, as The Thing frequently holds pride of place on rankings of Carpenters many achievements in the horror genre. This claustrophobic, paranoid creature feature is unbearably tense, never allowing viewers a moment’s peace, as who is human and who is a Geiger-esque explosion of limbs, slime, and teeth in waiting is always in question. The Thing is so well crafted that it even conquered Elliot’s natural cowardice and inspired him and his brother to talk about it for a bit in a recorded conversation that they felt compelled to transfer into cyberspace. Pull up a chair, then, and keep a wary eye on your housemates as we dive into today’s episode of Magellans at the Movies!

It’s a big, scary, lonely old world out there, ladies and gents, full of nasty and uncomfortable things like trigonometry, team building exercises, and pineapple pizza. If you’re looking for refuge from any of those things, you may find comfort in the pages of a book, but not necessarily anything by David Foster Wallace, the literary titan whose fiction and non-fiction work was frequently heavy of heart and long of wind. Morose as his style was, DFW remains a vaunted figure in the world of the written word, so it’s no surprise that, after his tragic and untimely death, people decided to make movies about him, such as The End of the Tour, a 2015 character study directed by James Ponsoldt and based on the interviews and conversations collected in Although of Course You End up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky. The End of the Tour follows David Lipsky as he tries to get at what’s in David Foster Wallace’s head, hoping to unlock the secrets of one of the most important authors of the time. The film was celebrated for its performances and sensitive depiction of the tortured, brilliant, lonely man at its center, and today our resident Wallace Wingnut (official name for David Foster Wallace fans, no need to look it up) Nathan has chosen it for review by the ever-discerning eyes of Magellans at the Movies! Put on your thick-rimmed glasses, grab a tumbler of whiskey neat, and brush up on your Kafka for today’s expedition into the soul-devouring abyss that is the pretentious literature scene, yay!

Dinosaurs! Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? There’s just something inherently cool about the idea of an ancient, mysterious kingdom of animals preceding us on Earth before being obliterated in a geological instant, leaving only bones behind for scientists to piece together. Dinosaurs have long been a source of awe in children and adults alike, so it’s no wonder that the titanic lizards (Or maybe titanic birds? Have we sorted all that out yet?) have worked their way into a fair few sources of fiction over the years, with the most enduring and popular example being the dino action of Jurassic Park. This 1993 science fiction thriller of nature’s power and human folly directed by the legendary Stephen Spielberg and based on the book of the same name by Michael Crichton is quite simply a sublime experience, a perfect polygamous marriage of concept, creators, actors, effects, and execution that stands as an unbreakable tribute to the magic of movies. Jurassic Park just has it all: it’s thrilling, thought-provoking and endlessly watchable, and today Elliot is going to prove once and for all to his contrarian brother that JP is a masterpiece for the ages. My dear listening public, welcome . . . to Magellans at the Movies!

The entertainment world is awash with dystopias these days, probably because the real world is as well. Crack open a book or sit down for a movie and there’s a non-zero chance you’ll be treated to a gray, sad main character inhabiting a gray, sad world meant to reflect some potentially harmful aspect of our gray, sad lives exaggerated to enhance danger but not so much that the similarities to present day life are unrecognizable. Entering such a saturated market means you’re bound to get at least a little splash of someone else’s work on your own, and while some try to keep overlap as limited as possible, others sink in and treat the word “derivative” like a gold star pinned to their chest. Hence Black Mirror, an ongoing British science-fiction anthology show with Cyberpunk aesthetics chronicling different characters as they move through the Twilight Zone of a Brave New World that’s at least 1984 times more dystopian than our own. Also, Blade Runner. Despite (or perhaps because of) the pride the show takes in its influences Black Mirror is a much-vaunted program by a great many viewers, and today, by listener request, Magellans at the Movies have selected Fifteen Million Merits, one of the most acclaimed episodes, to review from this cynical series of tech-based sorrow. Hop on the bike and power up your computer, let’s go!

It’s unlikely that any one movie, book, or play can lay legitimate claim to having single handedly invented any given genre. Storytelling has a long history that creators draw from consciously and unconsciously, but in the case of George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead, the argument for genre progenitor is probably as strong as it gets. The modern zombie movie, indeed, the figure of the modern zombie itself-as a decaying corpse returned to life with an insatiable hunger for human flesh-simply would not exist if not for this movie. Due to the film’s graphic violence (and then-rare African-American leading role), Night of the Living Dead released to controversy and generally mixed reviews, but since then it has enjoyed an immensely favorable revisiting, with praise heaped on the movie’s complex character dynamics, tense setting, and incisive social criticism. Filmed on a tiny budget with a miniscule cast and crew to match, the story of the making of Night is almost as entertaining and interesting as the film itself, so today the Magellans at the Movies thought they would take the plunge into this seminal work of flesh-eating fiction and undeniable piece of movie history. Stick your arms out, assume a vacant expression, and let’s shamble and groan our way into the episode!

Scream is one of horror’s most celebrated and popular franchises. Acting as a kind of State of the Genre address for decades now, Scream intermittently returns from periods of quiet to deliver updates on the tropes and trends of scary movies, as well as the men and women who make them, all wrapped up in an enduring who-dun-it formula wherein a group of friends/suspects is whittled down by the endearingly clumsy Ghostface before an inevitable climactic reveal. Scream is reliably funny and fun, existing in a pleasant median between soft and hardcore horror, leavening brutal, bloody kills with winking humor and quirky, likable characters. Elliot has been a fan of the series for a while now, and after artfully convincing Nathan to watch the movies by constantly berating him, both brothers were fully caught up with this classic slasher series in time for the latest entry. Scream 6, directed by Matt Bettineli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and released in 2023, is currently in theaters where it is enjoying critical and commercial success and, with the brothers Magalhães now being official Scream savants, they thought they would finally release a relevant review and give their thoughts on the film in all its blood, meta glory. Do you like scary podcasts?

From Saturday morning cartoons to the evening news to science fiction classics, television programs offer up more information, entertainment, and validation than social media, with the caveat that you have to remain relatively stationary while your sense of self-worth is obliterated. TV shows can be self-contained and episodic, or essentially long-form movies telling much more in depth, expansive stories than a two hour film ever could. It’s no surprise, then, that those movie-loving ragamuffins over at Magellans at the Movies have watched a show or two in their time, determined as they are to sustain an awareness of popular culture in lieu of developing a personality. That’s right, folks, in today’s episode we’re leaving the theater and hopping on the couch to talk all about our favorite stories as seen on the idiot box. Who cares about your mother’s warnings about too much TV rotting your brain, pull up a seat, grab the remote and get those synapses withering!

Silence. According to tired parents, librarians, and corporations accused of using child labor, it’s golden, and you’ve probably agreed at one point or another in your life when the noise just gets overwhelming. For Christians facing torture and execution in Japan during the Tokugawa period, however, God’s apparent devotion to the sanctity of keeping a lid on it probably wore a little thin. How do you deal with unanswered prayers, then, or the creeping notion that God is indifferent in the face of human suffering? These are the questions at the heart of Silence, a 2016 film directed by Martin Scorsese based on the book of the same name. Silence follows a pair of Jesuit priests searching for their lost mentor as they contend with theological crises, a frightened and endangered population, and an inquisitor so ruthless and cold blooded he makes Darth Vader look like an overbearing hall monitor. Silence didn’t exactly set the world on fire on release, but its incredible visuals, compelling story, and engaging themes ensure that most people who watch it come away thinking it’s something special, and that’s exactly the opinion of the Magellans at the Movies. Join us, then, as we talk about this slow-burning bit of faith film and why we like it so much. Give us this day our daily podcast, let’s go!

Reality. Most people don’t think about it very much, content to just live in it and let that be the end, but philosophers have been asking questions about reality and its nature since before Socrates was debating his nanny. Answers and theories abound, many of them fairly colorful, but none so colorful as the leather-bound, green-tinted, trench coat-bedecked, sunglasses-at-all-times-no-matter-the-fashion-consequences-or-relevant-light-level offered up by the Wachowski siblings in the 1999 sci-fi action movie The Matrix. The Matrix was, if you’ll pardon the pun, revolutionary at the time of its release, wowing audiences with a mind bending concept, incredible special effects, and stylish action sequences that would be ripped off, paid homage to, and parodied for the next few decades of filmmaking. Join the Magellans at the Movies, then, as they revisit this 90s classic to see how well all the dramatic flourishes and suuuuuuuper sloooooooo moooooootion hold up. Let’s hop into the rabbit hole and get things started!

Planes. They are big and fast and make loud noises and the ones used by the United States military can shoot things. This was the central conceit of Top Gun, a deeply 80s action movie about said big, fast, loud planes shooting things for your viewing pleasure and not much else. Despite a critical panning Top Gun became a mainstay in many a dad’s list of movies he would rattle off to demonstrate how far movies had fallen since his time at the theater thanks to its practical effects, bombastic action set pieces, and unashamedly ostentatious characters. Whatever its objective merits (of which I am decidedly skeptical), Top Gun proved popular enough to warrant a nod from Hollywood’s indefatigable sequel generator, and that’s how we got Top Gun Maverick, an Oscar nominated 2022 movie directed by Joseph Kosinski that was even more of a silver bullet than its predecessor. Top Gun Maverick was enormously popular, an old school, crowd pleasing blockbuster whose grandiose sensibilities and jaw-dropping practical fighter sequences were just the shot in the arm the film industry needed as it was shaking the dust off after its long stint in quarantine. Today, then, join the Magellans as they give their thoughts on a sequel to a movie they have absolutely no nostalgia for, which, according to the sacred texts of the church of hipster film bros, makes them uniquely able to assess this movie’s quality. I feel the need . . . the need to start the episode!

This week was Valentine’s Day, so it’s a week for thinking about those people who make your heart go pitter-patter. The people who give you butterflies every time you see them and get your pulse up into the hundreds. But wait, that isn’t your beloved, it’s the horrifying serial killer Hannibal the Cannibal and you aren’t a doe-eyed high school girl falling for Brock the football captain. No, you’re Clarice Starling and you’re a fired-up FBI agent-in-training hot in pursuit of the latest serial killer that’s terrorizing the nation. That’s right, this week the Magellans are covering the classic thriller The Silence of the Lambs. So, no lovey-dovey feelings this week, instead it’s all about the incredible performances, the immaculate cinematography and the two movie nerds breaking it down for ewe (sheep pun). Lock your windows and doors, and then settle in for another great episode!!!

Treating mental health problems is a tricky project. The mind is a staggeringly complex structure, composed of layers of experiences and biology that, when overlaid on and enmeshed with each other, create systems that are extremely difficult to understand or even articulate, much less fix when something goes wrong. Consequently, treating the mind requires discipline, empathy, and years of hard work on both the doctor and the patient. That sounds boring, though, so for most of human history it was easier to just think people with mental illnesses were weird and/or cursed, and as we all know the best way to deal with people who are weird and/or cursed is to put them in a big building and lock the doors and hope they don’t kill each other. Such was the state of mental healthcare in 1975 when Milos Forman directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, an Oscar-winning adaptation of Ken Kesey’s book of the same name. One Flew Over is empathetic in its approach to mental health, exposing the deficiencies in how it was treated and grounding its social commentary in spectacular performances by Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher. In today’s episode, then, let’s look back at this classic and see how it’s held up. Let the games begin!

It’s the end of the second World War and things are looking up! The Nazis have been defeated and their leaders are on trial for unspeakable war crimes, China is recovering from the brutal Japanese invasion while the Japanese are entering a period of national introspection and revitalization, and the long conflict has made the world powers of America, the U.K., and the Soviet Union into fast friends. I foresee a long, sunny period of cultural exchange, peaceable de-militarization, and . . . oh. Oh, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are discovering that sad fact of all brief but fiery romances: that relationships built on shared traumatic experiences are rarely built to go the distance. The breakup is messy to say the least, with Europe broken up and divided between them and both sides preparing to spend the next few decades trying to act like they’re too cool to notice the other while obsessively stalking their every move and trying to respond in the way most likely to hurt their former ally. We call this international feud the Cold War, and it was a pretty miserable affair, but it did give rise to the genre of the Cold War thriller: stories of espionage, intrigue, and political maneuvering. One of the most fondly remembered pieces of this now-defunct style is The Hunt for Red October, a 1990 movie directed by John McTiernan based on the Tom Clancy book of the same name. Red October is a tense, tightly plotted, slow-burning dance of submarines, sabotage, and sweat, and seeing as Russia has decided it’s tired of not being a global pariah anymore, Magellans at the Movies figured it was time to revisit this mainstay of their childhoods. Let’s dive, dive, dive into the episode!

Tar-an-tino-ism n. 1 a self-indulgent, protracted conversation, usually on a topic no one cares about, with copious amounts of swearing and racial epithets between two or more characters in a film directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantionisms are generally pretty popular, many would argue that they’re what make his movies so enjoyable, so it’s no surprise that Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s 1994 classic, is frequently cited as his greatest achievement, drowning as it is in Tarantinoisms. Pulp Fiction is stylish and sleek in a very grimy kind of way, a throwback to the lurid grindhouse movies of yesteryear that has endeared itself to many a college film student, but the Magellans at the Movies never went to film school they went to films, which might explain why they’re more lukewarm on this cultural touchstone. Whatever the reason for their edginess, the Magellans are back and ready to alienate even more of their rapidly dwindling audience so let’s get this over with so I can find another job that doesn’t pay me in off brand chocolate bars. Go!

A lot of stuff happened in the American West from the late nineteenth century, unfortunately most of it was either pretty depressing or pretty tame. People took stuff that wasn’t theirs, but mostly from Native Americans rather than the local bank in daring heists, and you were more likely to die from disease than a tense quickdraw duel with the man that shot your pa. We’re not here to talk about historical accuracy, though, we’re here to celebrate the American West as it has been mythologized by the silver screen: a realm of hardened gunslingers with stubble-dusted chins engaging in thrilling shootouts, untouched natural vistas brimming with the promise of adventure and wealth, and copious amounts of DUST! Westerns are a staple of American movies, but because we here at Magellans at the Movies are nothing if not men of the modern age we decided to eschew The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in favor of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a 2018 anthology film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Buster Scruggs is jam packed with everything that makes the Coens great: masterful directing, eccentric characters, and pitch-black comedy that complements intelligent themes with the added bonus of taking place across six different stories drawing on classic Western tropes and images; a filmmaking playground that the Coens put to great effect. Saddle up, listeners!

Pirates. During their heyday in the 16th-19th century when the combined rises of mercantilism, imperialism, and naval technologies sparked an explosion of commercial, exploratory, and political sea-travel, piracy was synonymous with murder, thievery, and rape, but in one of history’s most impressive spin campaigns, the modern image of the historical pirate has had a thorough cleansing resulting in the romantic figure of the swashbuckling hero we know today. One of the principal examples of this curious instance of historical revisionism is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, a 2003 blockbuster directed by Gore Verbinski that sparked an explosion of wealth on par with the Age of Sail. Lovable Jack Sparrow isn’t a murderer, he just kills fish monsters, skele-pirates, and British people, and no one cares about any of those guys, so he and his crew of rambunctious buccaneers have been able to sail through a stupefying FIVE movies whilst reliably remaining the protagonists rather than the villains. Today, then, let’s revisit this nostalgic bit of popcorn entertainment by ignoring the dismal state of the franchise as it stands and returning to where it all began, when Johnny Depp was a big star, the Magellans were young, and everyone thought a movie based on a theme park ride was going to be a one-and-done kind of thing. Avast, ye scurvy listeners, raise the anchor and loose the main, let us set sail!

2022, what a great year it has been for people who haven’t been elected British Prime Minister or for people who haven’t bought Twitter. Really, it’s been a good year who did very little proactive. Unfortunately the Magellans have been very proactive this year, taking in a multitude of cinematic offerings and in this gigantic episode they will be bringing their thoughts on the superlatives of those offerings. But not content to merely survey the film landscape the brothers are also sharing their thoughts on their favorite books, video games, and television shows in this episode. So, get some popcorn and a nice, big puzzle to enjoy a special extra long episode of the Magellans at the Movies. Let’s ride!!!

Christmas, according to the song it’s the most wonderful time of the year. The holiday’s superlative status is derived from different factors according to different people. Maybe you’re really into cholesterol and enjoy stuffing your face. Maybe consumerism is more your thing, and you just love adding to your material wealth. Or, if you’re a pair of emotionally stunted young men from rural Iowa whose only mental escape from the 9-5 cubicle awaiting them was film, Christmas is probably most associated with Christmas movies. I exaggerate, of course, Christmas really is a special time of year, and Christmas movies really were a big part of the Magellan household experience. They’ve seen more than their fair share of tinsel town’s (Christmas pun) holiday offerings, so a Christmas classic like 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol directed by Brian Henson can only escape their notice for so long. Thanks to a convenient convergence of coincidences, the Magellans both watched this beloved adaptation of Charles Dickens’ seminal work for the first time recently, and since it’s the season of giving they have a gift for you: another episode of their little-known podcast! Merry Christmas, everyone!

War, what is it good for? It’s a question that has hounded philosophers, humanitarians, politicians, Fallout protagonists, and more. Throughout history many people at some point in their life have paused to consider whether humanity’s most destructive method of conflict resolution might be more trouble than it’s worth, and some of those people, upon reaching a negative conclusion, have put pen to paper in the form of anti-war books, paintings, and movies. One of the most famous examples of this is All Quiet on the Western Front, a German novel about the first World War that quickly gained a global audience thanks to its powerful, haunting depiction of life on the front lines. The book has been adapted for the screen multiple times, and today’s installment of Magellans at the Movies will be reviewing the latest iteration of this deeply moving tale of human folly. All Quiet on the Western Front as imagined by German director Edward Berger was released in 2022 a few months ago and did quite well for itself with critics and audiences alike, but because Nathan and Elliot are nothing if not attention-craving contrarians they decided to try to ruin everyone’s fun, if you can call a visually grim, graphically violent story from one of history’s most mind-meltingly horrific conflicts that. Over the top, lads!

When people think about the ways in which they would improve the high school experience, there are probably a wide range of elements they mark out as being particularly painful for all who experience it. Buildings with all the aesthetic flare and functional layout of a three-year-old’s pillow fort. State-approved lesson plans capable of reducing even the most dynamic, vibrant subjects into the educational material of a strong dose of valium. Lunch food derived from recipes written by homicidal maniacs who can’t even be bothered to pair your daily puddle of grease with fava beans or a nice Chianti. The list goes on, but of these innumerable tweaks and edits I don’t think many people would say the chief woe of American high school is the fact that it’s terrestrial. That, loyal listener, is the concern of a very different clientele: superheroes! You can’t teach teenagers how to be the next Superman on the ground, there’s dust and scary beetles down there! No, the best place for this unique form of instruction is found up high, sky high, you might even say. That’s right, folks, today’s installment of Magellans at the Movies addresses Sky High, a 2005 superhero spoof/kids’ comedy, directed by Mike Mitchell, following the colorful exploits of a group of freshmen at the titular ariel high school where they learn to become the next generation of unitard-wearing vigilantes. Sky High didn’t set the world on fire on release, but it has since gained a cult following and seeing as it was a big part of the Magellans Brothers’ childhood, today we thought it might be fun to revisit this curious piece of early 2000s culture. Into nostalgia or disillusionment we go, folks, up, up, and away!

We’ve just been invited to an eccentric billionaire’s island home, and you know what that means: vacation time! Grab your trunks, your sunscreen, and ninety-nine bottles of beer to be appended to the wall and distributed communally one by one over the course of the trip because we are paradise bound! We’ll probably be drunk by the time we get there because that’s a lot of alcohol, but, after a greasy burger sees to your hangover, you should get out there and enjoy the island’s amenities! Gaze in wonder at the Bond villain-esque architecture (get it? ‘Cuz Daniel Craig? James Bond? Is this thing on?), laugh along with the eclectic collection of narcissists and jerkwads that have joined us on this heavenly retreat and . . . gasp! What’s that? Someone’s been murdered? Heavens to Betsy, someone call Colonel Sanders’ third cousin because this is a job for Benoit Blanc! That’s right folks, after Knives Out was showered with stars, A’s, and thumbs ups (to say nothing of cold hard cash), another adventure with the rootin-est tootin-est detective to ever smoke a cigar was inevitable. Hence Glass Onion, the 2022 who-dun-it directed by Rian Johnson following up on his surprise hit. Glass Onion is doing pretty well for itself critically at the moment, and since we’ve seen it recently the Magellans thought they would contribute to the cultural discourse by weighing in on this tropical thriller and doubtlessly end the conversation with their world-renowned wit. The game’s afoot!

Spider-man. If you’re a member of today’s youth, upon whose childhood Disney’s film franchises could feasibly claim an executive producer credit, the name probably evokes images of Tom Holland. Spider-man in his most recent iteration was part of an established brand before he even thwipped his first web in Captain America: Civil War, and his further appearances in Avengers movies as well as his own trilogy of smash-hit films have only thrust the character to greater heights. For the cranky, miserable old men of the audience (hello, Magellans), however, Spider-man evokes a much different set of sights and sounds. Actors who look like they’re at least thirty trying to play high school students. Fight scenes with hilariously obvious wire work. Special effects that we could have sworn were photo-realistic when we first saw them. And one of the most spine-tingling, blood-chilling evil laughs in cinematic history. I’m talking, of course, about the webhead as he was imagined by director Sam Raimi in his 2002 classic of superhero movies, Spider-man. Before the MCU challenged Star Wars for the title of most ubiquitous institution of pop culture, before even Nolan’s dark knight trilogy opened the superhero genre to pretentious film nerds, we had Spider-man, an occasionally cheesy, often funny, and perpetually entertaining relic that spawned two sequels of disparate quality, all of which were a big part of the Magellans’ childhood. Today, then, let’s indulge our nostalgia and revisit this quaint artifact of yesteryear along with the equally quaint but less nostalgic banter and recommendations that this program is supposedly known for. Let’s get swinging!

What if I told you that an infinite set of universes existed and was open to you as long as you’re willing to wear a funny earpiece and lick the nearest traditionally un-licked thing? “Fiddlesticks!” I hear you say. “Why, that kind of poppycock is fit only for speculative fiction!” You’re quite right, O reader of the outdated vernacular, but don’t be so quick to dismiss speculative fiction such as this. When you’re dealing with limitless realities, you of course have a limitless toybox from which to draw the most mind-boggling, jaw-dropping spectacle movie goers have ever seen! Or, if you’re a pair of indie directors working with an indie studio, you could ignore most of that and stick to the exotic confines of an IRS building. As it happens, today’s movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, a 2022 action movie from alliterative directing duo the Daniels, goes with the second option. Oh well. Everything Everywhere was a surprise hit with critics and audiences alike, and has a sunny outlook going into awards season, but we here at the offices of Contrarian Movie Bros-sorry, I mean Magellans at the Movies were not quite as impressed. Everything Everywhere has a creative and intriguing premise, but is held back by indulgent scenes of action, shoddy character development, and a questionable moral message and you can hear about all of that and more in this week’s episode! So, wrap your head in tissue paper, dunk it in maple syrup and apply to a nearby stack of flapjacks and verse-hop into the strange and terrible universe of the Magellans at the Movies!

Nature can be both awesome in its complexity and beauty and terrifying in its power and scale. The diseased raccoon sifting through your garbage can at midnight may appear like a gentle, majestic citizen of the forest, but fail to treat it with respect and reverence and you will know the wrath of nature. That’s enough about how I got my new rabies shots, though, let’s talk about Godzilla, the diseased raccoon of the monster movie world. Godzilla is a staple of the very medium of filmmaking, a franchise many decades old boasting dozens of movie installments in addition to comics, TV shows, toys, pretty much anything that can be commodified and sold in your local Wal-mart. Godzilla is usually a Japanese product, but in 2014 American director Gareth Edwards took up the call to bring him back to western audiences after Roland Emmerich tried to do the same to . . . let’s say uneven results. Most people are fairly lukewarm on this iteration of the King of the Monsters, but we here at Magellans at the Movies Inc. happen to think Godzilla 2014 is something special, a fresh, unique take on the titular titan focusing more on tension, awe, and scale than relentless edge of your seat thrills, chills, and the color orange. Today, then, let’s talk about this curious little film, why we think it deserves more praise than it gets, and a few other movies you might like as well. 3, 2, 1, launch!

Baths, you may know them as those mini-swimming pools you used to clean off in when you were young and had time for anything more luxurious than a five second rinse in the shower and a few spritzes of Axe body spray, but that’s just because your mindset isn’t cosmopolitan enough. Around the world, baths aren’t always individual experiences where you burn your skin off with whatever toxic waste they make store-brand shampoo out of, sometimes, as in the traditional Japanese sento, they’re group experiences meant to bring a community together. Combine that with the novel premise of a communal bath house for spirits Japanese mythology and you have Spirited Away, the most charming film about child labor to ever hit the cinema! This 2001 animated classic, brought to you by the dynamic duo of director Hayao Miazaki and production company Studio Ghibli, is warm, funny, occasionally a bit scary, and ultimately a delight of a film bursting with creative worldbuilding and gorgeous art-style. And who better to judge this quintessentially Japanese story than two Americans from Iowa? Get in there Magellans at the Movies and do your bantery, analytical, reccomendy thing! Let the podcast begin!

Everyone hates winter, or at least everyone who has good opinions on seasons dislikes winter. And every writer has some amount of self-loathing going, otherwise they would pursue a more lucrative career such as working in masonry. And even further, it seems like everyone in the 80s hated their family, so when Jack Torrence took a job being stuck in a hotel with his family for the winter to attempt to write the next great American novel, maybe he should have known it would not go well for him. But it did go well for the camera crew documenting this process, they got to make one of the greatest horror movies of all time. And now the brothers Magellan are going to tackle this film for your listening pleasure, diving into both the technical elements and the deep thematic material that Stanley Kubrick brings to this classic adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. So, grab your fire ax, big wheel tricycle, and creepy twin sister and let’s get started!! Here’s the Magellans!!!!!!

The director. When it comes to the process of making movies there are few positions that hold the promise of greater acclaim for success or more ruthless criticism for failure. Rightly or wrongly, the director of a movie is sort of the face of the production. If an actor turns in a shoddy performance, we might say that they were given poor direction. If the cinematographer has apparently confused a dynamic, engaging visual style with the constant use of Dutch angles, we may assume that the pushy director is just really into feeling like he’s about to slide out of his chair when he’s at the theater. If a movie’s writing is shot through with cliches, melodrama, and an overreliance on vapid spectacle, we might just chalk it up to the usual Marvel formula, har har har. Whether or not any of this is fair, I think it’s safe to say that when someone decides to direct a movie they are faced with a difficult road. No area of filmmaking lacks at least a hint of the influence of the director, so when one such director manages to succeed in wrangling the different aspects of production into a coherent and satisfying whole not just once, but continuously over a long career in Hollywood, people notice. Today, then, on our twentieth episode, the Magellans are bringing to you five examples each of directors that have, for reasons of style, mastery of genre, or simple, inexplicable skill, captured their notice. It’s pretty much recommendations straight through today, folks, so get your DVD players ready, warm up the ol’ VHS player, and queue up your preferred streaming service for the Magellans at the Movies Director Extravaganza with bonus soundtrack provided by Mom insensitively clomping around the kitchen. Lights, camera, podcast!

You know, it’s at times like these that I like to pause and reflect on what makes a good movie. Why do some legends of the silver screen leave us cheering with rapturous abandon, chattering excitedly to our seatmates about the experience we have just shared while others see us walking out of the theater in disgust, our delicious snacks abandoned and our outlook ever so slightly dimmed? I can’t answer that question for you, loyal listener, but I can say that, for me personally, the former category is unlikely to contain many overlong, jumbled, paper-thin “comedies” about young men trying to take revenge on their abusive step-fathers. Enter Hot Rod, a 2007 comedy directed by Akiva Schaffer and hosting a cast of SNL alums. Hot Rod charts the effort of Rod, an aspiring stuntman, to raise money for a heart transplant for his stepfather Frank, the idea being that he might one day earn Frank’s respect by . . . beating him up. Hilarious. Anyways, Nathan and Elliot watched it because some people Nathan knows requested it, so let it never be said that we ignore the suggestion box. Expect plenty of sarcasm as we break Hot Rod down, and look out for a very special surprise guest star! Let’s put the pedal to the metal!

I can hardly wait! Memento is unsurprisingly difficult to follow, but those that endure the initial confusion will be rewarded with a truly special movie about how reality is constructed through memory and perception all wrapped up in Nolan’s classically sharp writing and cast of immensely talented actors. If you know anything about Memento it is almost certainly its novel structure, told backwards from the perspective of a man with retrograde amnesia on a mission to avenge his murdered wife. Nowhere is this derision for the idea of the audience knowing what on earth is going on more pronounced than in Memento, Nolan’s second movie and the film that served as his battering ram through the notoriously sturdy gates that separate cultural obscurity from the mainstream consciousness. When some tell stories on a pathetically linear chronology, Christopher Nolan takes the arrow of time, in all its permanently forward-facing simplicity, as a personal insult and has dedicated his working life to its desecration. Where others content themselves with the three dimensional, he looks to dimensions four through twelve. While we play checkers, he plays chess. When it comes to mind-melting movies you need seven pages of notes and a basic understanding of theoretical physics to understand, you can’t go wrong with Christopher Nolan.

A little plastic, a little glass, and a reason to rule all, that is myself- Marcus Aurelius if he was a computer. It is with these powerful words in mind that Steve Jobs (probably) set out to usher in the information age by providing every man, woman, and child with the means to access an increasingly intelligent, versatile series of electronic brains capable of processing and performing ever-more complex tasks in an ever-more complex and evolving digital universe. Was he pleased that the most complex task most people ask of their personal electronic brains was the occasional game of solitaire or the provision of a video of cats playing the piano? Unlikely, and now that Mr. Jobs is eleven years dead, we are unlikely to ever find out. That doesn’t mean people aren’t going to try to get into the head of this titanic and still-controversial figure of history. Enter Danny Boyle to direct the Sorkin-penned script for Steve Jobs, an uncreatively named biopic released in 2015 to critical acclaim. Steve Jobs (the movie, I mean, not the guy) wields Aaron Sorkin’s snappy dialogue to great effect in a memorable character study zeroing in on three critical moments in Steve Jobs’ (now I’m talking about the man, jeez this is unnecessarily confusing) career. It’s a sharply written, skillfully directed triumph boosted to yet greater heights by a slew of immensely talented actors firing on all cylinders. Joining us to talk about said triumphs is Will Spalding, a friend of Nathan’s but someone whom Elliot has never met before so who knows how that’s going to go. Well, there’s only one way to find out, so Will, sharpen your analytical knives and flex your comedic chops because this is Magellans at the Movies, where the standards of criticism are high, and the humor is . . . present. Go go go!

Greetings! Welcome to Magellans at the Airport Travel Agency, I’ll be helping you for today. Looking to get away from it all but not sure where to go? Eager for a relaxing stay in a refined, high-class environment? Well let’s take a dive into this file here and see what we can’t scare up for you. Hmm, the Bates Motel? Nice place but the showers are a bit dodgy. Hotel Earle? Run by the Coen brothers but I think it burned down a while ago. The Overlook? I think they’re in the winter season and you DO NOT want to stay there during the off season. Ah, here’s a good one, the Grand Budapest Hotel. Now this is an establishment with class, my friend, a true blast from the past complete with lobby boys, ornate rooms, and even elevator assistants from back when people couldn’t be trusted to press a numbered button. Might be a little tense right now what with the war on, but it would be worth a visit just to meet the concierge, a man so eccentric and ostentatious he makes Elvis look like the worship pastor in a small midwestern church. I guarantee you’ll have a good time there, and when you’re done come back for a recommendation on where to, uh, watch next? I don’t know, this metaphor is getting strained, the point is that we’re reviewing the 2014 Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel this week, and, like all Wes Anderson movies, its style is ornate and its characters eccentric. Nathan and Elliot have plenty of thoughts on Anderson’s most well known offering, so let’s check in, get unpacked, and hit the pool for all the banter, analysis, and recommendations that you know and . . . well, that you know. Let’s do it to it!

Murder. Hopelessness. Darkness. The creeping, oppressive fear of life’s monstrous emptiness that spreads in the brain like a malignant tumor and drowns all light and joy in a grim tide of crushing resignation. Bleak stuff, yes? Maybe for silly sheeple like you and I who believe in things like hope, objective truths, and some kind of logically defensible moral structure, but for director David Fincher, nihilistic conceptions of humanity’s bottomless capacity for evil is the stuff of Christmas cards. Perusing through Fincher’s filmography may be like taking a tour of sadness in a museum curated by a man with the outlook of Eeyore (with one bizarrely lighthearted exhibit about the mindset of youth defying the physical bounds of age), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t enjoy your time in David Fincher’s Circus of Suffering so long as you stay away from girls with tattoos of fictional lizards. Yes, it is hard to call any given Fincher movie “enjoyable”, but it is very easy to call them “great”, and the subject of today’s installment of Magellans at the Movies examines one such example of greatness: the 1995 detective thriller Se7en. Se7en, aside from its unwieldy name, is predictably Fincher-y. It's dark, it centers conflicted characters grappling with overwhelming evil, and, oh yeah, it’s absolutely captivating and shot to utter perfection by a masterful director. We’ll try to keep things as upbeat as possible, but with a movie like this the recommendations and analysis are unlikely to turn your frown upside down, so maybe watch The Lego Movie once you’re done, yeah? Take care of your mental health, folks. Anyhoo, I need to go rethink my life so let the episode commence!

Fish, probably the most unwelcome thing to find on a pizza aside from maybe a heaping helping of crude oil. You probably don’t think that much about fish as you go through your daily life, and unless you’re a sociopathic dentist trafficking kidnapped fish to your equally unhinged niece to murder, they’re not terribly concerned with you either. This mutual indifference does a great disservice to both our species, however, because, as we see in the 2003 animated classic Finding Nemo directed by Andrew Stanton, fish actually have vibrant internal lives and a sprawling, complex culture! This week let’s all take some time to sit down with this movie and reflect on all we can learn from our aquatic allies, the good we could do together, and the many unfortunate pets who ended up in sewage treatment plants because of little Billy’s kind-hearted but ultimately misguided attempt to send his fish to the ocean via the toilet on Gill’s advice. Despite the minor fish genocide Finding Nemo undoubtedly caused with its infamous assertion that “all drains lead to the ocean”, the movie is rightly considered to be one of the many jewels in Pixar animation studio’s heavily bedazzled crown, and because Nathan and Elliot were getting kind of depressed with all these movies about people dying and civilization collapsing, they’ve made it the subject of their latest episode! Expect plenty of banter and some top tier recommendations to go along with their DEEP (that’s an ocean pun) analysis of the movie’s content. Let’s SINK in (this is cracking good stuff I’m giving you, why aren’t you laughing?)!

So, your mother has just died, leaving her estate in your care, but the rapacious bank with which she did business spent the last few years of her life squeezing pennies out of her pocket with sadistic glee. You’re a divorced dad who wants to do right by your children and leave them the family ranch that has just been found to be oil rich, but the bank is closing in, ready to foreclose and reclaim the house. What’s an enterprising young Texan like yourself to do? The answer, as any hard-jawed, steely-eyed man’s man knows, is sell cookies at your local theater troop’s yearly musical and skim enough off the top to satisfy the enormous debt. What’s that? Not good at baking? Hate musicals? Well, my friend, it looks like you’ll have to take the Hell or High Water route, and fortunately this week’s movie, the 2016 best picture nominee Hell or High Water directed by David Mackenzie, can tell you all about it. Just enlist the help of your reckless, dangerous brother and recruit the very bank that has been at your heels into a decidedly involuntary GoFundMe campaign in the form of a robbing spree that spans the Lone Star State and bing bang boom! Money time. Now that you’re rich and in the clear, may I recommend today’s episode of Magellans at the Movies, which reviews this very film (and also accepts donations fyi)? Don’t worry, you’ll get your fill of analysis, banter, and recommendations before the lawman tracks you down for a tense confrontation, but only if you start the episode now, so what are you waiting for? Let’s giddyup to the movies!

If any franchise can be described as rivaling Star Wars’ world-dominating ubiquity, it’s probably Marvel. Beginning with a film charting a billionaire’s efforts to essentially make himself a terminator suit powered by a miraculous new energy source in a cave with nothing but scraps (a premise that, despite Jeff Bridges’ incredulity, comes off as hard-core realism compared to the more . . . imaginative plots of the later films), the MCU currently churns out content at a rate even Call of Duty finds excessive. Whatever your opinion on them, however, Marvel movies are extremely profitable and popular with critics and audiences alike, and despite much tilting from a small but vocal sect of YouTube reviewers, the Marvel windmill is set to spin on until rapture. Or so it seems. Because now a new challenger approaches, fleet of foot and loose of limb, and ready to flail about before the windmill like a breakdancer having a seizure until their voices are heard. That’s right, MCU, Magellans at the Movies have thrown down the gauntlet and are ready to take on one of your most beloved episodes, Captain America: the Winter Soldier! This 2014 film directed by Anthony and Joe Russo may have all the Marvel standards (musclebound men looking pensive, grandiose plots with insane stakes, and at least one lingering shot of an attractive woman’s backside), it may have made hundreds of millions of dollars, it may have won the hearts and minds of millions of fans, but that’s only because they haven’t heard two college students from Iowa whine about it yet! Don’t even bother begging for mercy, once we’ve had our say, I guarantee that all three of our listeners will never give you a red cent again, a financial blow from which you will never recover. Let the destruction of the MCU begin now!

Being a mobster can be a bit of a mixed bag. Sure you can have all the atrocious pinky rings, oily hair, and pressed suits you could ever wish for, but at what cost? According to Goodfellas, the 1990 mob movie following the life of actual former gangster Henry Hill directed by the master of mob movies Martin Scorcese, that cost is a Shakespearean fall from grace attended by all manner of marital strife, drug-induced paranoia, and overweight, balding dads telling you that you can just “fugeddabout” going on living if you cross them. Harrowing stuff. Still, like a middle schooler challenged to down a ghost pepper in one bite in front of their cheering friends, the allure of fame and power can be an overwhelming force, even in the face of terrible danger. That’s enough about Nathan’s emergency room-destined seventh grade sleepover, though, because we have a movie to get to! Goodfellas is beloved by many and often lifted up as an example of its prestigious director’s finest work, but I must admit, the Magellans have never been the movie’s most enthusiastic proponents. In the interest of offering a balanced perspective, then, we’ve invited Goodfellas aficionado Jake Brend, whose notable achievements include growing a beard and doing our intro, onto the podcast to mock-sorry, I mean patiently listen to his argument about why this movie deserves its lauded status. And action!

Well, dear reader, it seems we have arrived at the tenth installment of Magellans at the Movies, and the tenth bit of anything is always considered notable for reasons I’ve never really understood. I guess people just like the number ten because it’s usually the easy part of math problems. Anyways, over the past weeks you’ve listened to and come to love Magellans at the Movies for its biting criticism, adroit analysis, and euphoric celebrations of the best and worst of this medium. Or maybe you just appreciate the program’s utility as a mild sedative at bedtime. Either way, as you’ve listened to each increasingly lengthy session of mindless blather, you may have begun to wonder about your guides through these somniferous sermons of cinema. Who are these strange men, and where did they come from? Why did Elliot disappear for three years in the Australian Outback and why did he return? What do the tiny runic symbols printed on the inside of Nathan’s glasses mean and why does he draw them every night on his wall? Why do these descriptions never end before meeting the word count of your average Stephen King book? Unfortunately none of those questions will be answered today, but we will be celebrating our tenth episode by sharing a bit about ourselves as movie watchers. Not that anyone asked for it, but what is a podcast if not casting pieces of oneself into the digital void to the delight and rapturous attention of precisely no one? In all seriousness we never held any illusions about the possibility for great fame or success, we’re just a pair of brothers who love movies, love talking about them, and wanted to share some of that love with a larger audience, however paltry the expansion. We thank you for listening, even if it was only once, and we hope you have and will continue to enjoy our bloviating about movies we adore, despise, and are indifferent to every week. Let’s get going!