Point 10 Podcast

Is Rocky II almost as good as the first one? How much worse is Rambo II than Rambo I?

If time travel gives the traveler God-like knowledge, what does that mean for the status of their relations to others in the world? Is it even possible for non-coercive relationality to exist in such a state? Andie MacDowell's slap montage wants to have it both ways. In this essay, I will...

Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, Leelee Sobieski, a cross-country road trip, and a CB-radio prank. What could go wrong? This movie attempts to answer that question. Or perhaps, this movie IS an answer to that question. I guess it depends on whether we know what a movie is.

On third thought, do we even like Robert Zemeckis movies?

Get in, loser. We're going to the future, and then the past, and then the nightmare bizarro present, and then the past again, and then -- if all goes well -- the present we can truly desire.

What does it mean to be tardy when you've got a time machine? What does it say about the nature of time and human life that the unfolding of future events really only seems to depend on a couple key moments? What kind of recursive weirdness is involved in Marty parenting his own parents?

It is a whole different kind of nostalgia at work here, and no one says it better than Annie: "1996: when racism is casual and suicide attempts are punk rock." Do we accidentally deviate for a moment and discuss Catholic high schools, nuns-as-teachers, underpaid and unrecognized women's labor, and school vouchers? We sure do!

Stephen Dyson and Jeff Dudas, hosts of the UConn Popcast, join us to talk about whether there is any redemption (in all the senses) for Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, whether Glen Powell's "Hangman" is supposed to be a reincarnation of Iceman or of Maverick, what Jennifer Connolly's Penny Benjamin has to teach Maverick, and -- ultimately -- whether it's possible to defeat two 5th-Gen enemy fighters in an F-14 the characters describe as "so old," a "bag of ass," and a "museum piece."

When a new Linklater comes out, we obviously have to drop everything and talk about it. The question that really kicks off this conversation comes from Andy: Is this a Richard Linklater movie?

In the first installment of a short miniseries within the pod, Andy Smarick helps us think through what the original Rocky and Rambo have in common as future icons of 80s American cinema (and beyond). Both of the titular characters are symbolic of lives irresponsibly wasted -- but by different forces, and in different ways, and with different possibilities for redemption.

Winston and Andy are back, back again, to talk about the Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt vehicle "Edge of Tomorrow." What are the ethics of consent in a time-loop situation? What does "resetting the day" mean for the one who carries the memories with them? What does it mean to be self-interested rather than selfish? Is this movie simply satisfying an audience desire to watch Cruise die over and over again?

Winston and Andy return to go all the way back to the Richard Linklater ur-text, in search of the sensibilities that he would elaborate across the rest of his career. Come for the aging anarchist lying about his participation in the Spanish Civil War, stay for the woman tracking trying to get her boyfriend to stop taking Nietzsche so literally!

Richard Linklater's "spiritual successor" to Dazed and Confused struggles to inherit the mantle, we think. I can't tell what my favorite part of this episode is. Is it when Andy forgets McReynolds's name and describes him as "jacked up Weird Al with a bowl cut"? Is it when Winston strengthens the connection between Willoughby and Wooderson by noting that Matthew McConaughey also starred in Failure to Launch? Is it when Andy--quite appropriately--reads the poem "Pitcher," by Robert Francis, into the record? Listener, you decide!

Do long-term relationships require foundational lies? Are marital fights inverted versions of Linklater's favorite time-collapse phenomena? Is it possible to look hopefully toward the future from the middle of the journey, bearing forward the burdens of the past? Is this a question about temporality or about perception? Is it possible to enjoy a film that is an existential trial to watch?

Annie says that this whole movie is a critique of heteronormativity. Susan: [pause] "You're going to have to sell me on that one, because..." We're all such nerds.

Is time a lie? Is Jesse selfish? What is the weight of the past that sits between them? Is happiness even possible? Is that the question?

Julie Delpy's Celine falls for Ethan Hawke's Jesse when Jesse relates a story of his deceased grandmother appearing to him in the mist thrown off my a summertime hose -- His parents told him that death is forever, but, he says, "I know what I saw." The question for the characters throughout the slow movement of the film is similar: What are they seeing, and how sure are they? What a film to originally encounter in our late adolescence. What a film to revisit now.

This podcast is generally about critically revisiting fondly-remembered films from our youth. There's just so little fondness to express in this episode, though. Oof.

The two big questions here are: (1) Is this film an exercise in nostalgia or not? And (2) Is this film glorifying the intoxications of youth or not? When I was 15, I definitely would have said "yes" to both questions. And now?

Which two movies, you ask? Boyz N the Hood and Point Break! Winston and Andy work very hard to make it seem as though these two movies are more or less equally worthy of attention, but it's tough sledding -- and winds up being at least as revealing of how the Hollywood of a certain era understands the connection between the moral stakes of a fictional story and return on investment.

In which we discover, truly, how much I was missing by not spending enough time with comic books as a kid, and in which we learn again and again how the Spiderman character in particular allows writers and audiences to explore infinite iterations of adolescent struggles with the experiences of inheritance, responsibility, loss, and change. Do we see a spark in these films? That's a copy.

Seriously: the killer's motives make NO SENSE. He has gotten away with avenging his daughter's death, and four teenagers in the full flower of their glorious youth think that THEY are responsible! And everyone else seems to think that David Egan accidentally drowned, or just disappeared, or something. So why would the killer want to off his own alibis? This movie brought to you by the North Carolina State Tourism Board. Not really.

Is there such a thing as a "meet-violent?" Was George Clooney simply auditioning for the Ocean's 11 franchise with this performance? How does love enmesh us in a web of vulnerabilities, to use Winston's phrase, and what does it have to do with midlife crises? All this and more in a discussion of yet another Elmore Leonard adaption.

It doesn't make sense for this show to have "seasons" at all, so please enjoy this thirty-first overall episode of the podcast, featuring substantial digressions into Star Wars and Westworld, in addition to the promised subject matter!

In which we tackle the really big questions, like: "Is 44 old or not that old?" "Is a body count of 4 high or low?" "Who, in this movie about seedy life in the underworld, most closely resembles Mr. Rogers?"

The cast of this movie is so incredible that Hank Azaria, Brendan Fraser, and Janeane Garofalo are merely scene-stealing cameo appearances!

Chili Palmer, minivan connoisseur, would be on the right side of the WGA writer's strike, is all we're saying.

What EXACTLY are Jerry and Dorothy on the well-lit front porch, in full view of any neighbors, before they go inside to be swept away by Chad-the-nanny's jaaaaaazzzzzz?

Can the king of the school turn a girl who wears a one-piece to the beach into a prom queen? Find out the answer in the best-ever adaptation of Pygmalion*! Also if I were to tell you that this movie features Gabrielle Union, Lil Kim, Usher, and Dulé Hill -- which it does! -- you would never in a million years be able to predict how white it remains. *except for literally all the others.

Look. It's actually insane that one of the top-five lines in movie history -- "If peeing your pants is cool, then consider me Miles Davis" -- is barely a top-three line in this very film.

What can we say about a film that has everything--love, death, a soaring score, the widest ties, a SHOCKING effort at a Jamaican accent? Plenty, as it happens! Join us!

Why would you remove a guy's face FIRST, and only then trim up his bangs??

I heard that you were feeling ill: headache, fever, and a chill. I came to help restore your pluck, because I'm the nurse who likes to spend inordinate amounts of time dissecting Ed Rooney's trauma, Ferris's own sociopathic tendencies, Charlie Sheen's louche and effortless sexiness, and whether Cameron is not the actual protagonist of this movie. Won't you join us?

In which it is revealed that what we had previously thought of as genre-defining artistry in the world of spy-based action films is really, basically, the Pilgrim's Progress on the levels of both the individual and the national soul. And never has the phrase "This is not who we are" been more laughably, enragingly false.

Enhance your calm! Velvety fascism is here!

Pop quiz, hot shot. Which movie features a college freshman reading Nietzsche by the pool, a lot of drug jokes that went over our teenaged heads, and a surprisingly underwhelming soundtrack? It's Clueless! Susan Haarman joins us LIVE and IN PERSON to talk about this classic adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma.

Is this an end-of-history movie or not? Is Arnold Schwarzenegger dreaming the whole thing or not? What is the political vision, and what are the stakes, of this film?

Will Smith, at the height of his powers, encounters a production that not even his voluminous charisma can salvage. He turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix to do this movie! Sam and Brett join to talk about the lazy and horrible race/gender jokes, and we debate the issue of whether Kenneth Branaugh's Arliss Loveless is the best or the worst part of this movie. Is he doing the BEST acting? He's certainly doing the MOST.

Andy describes the end of this movie as a "Deus rex machina" and I have not stopped chuckling about it since.

Welcome to Earth! Andy and I get together to remember a time when Will Smith wasn't yet a huge star, when Harry Connick, Jr. was just a crooner, and when Jeff Goldblum was still playing characters rather than "Jeff Goldblum." And we talk about the 90s geopolitics that made this movie possible, including Vietnam War memory, Clinton-era cosmopolitanism, and the role of aliens as an external and existential threat to unified humanity.

There is a huge question that runs throughout our conversation here: Should we understand romantic comedies as parables of a certain kind, or should we hold the characters in romantic comedies to a standard of psychological realism? But that's far from the only question on which Dr. Schultz and I find ourselves divided. Is Nora Ephron an object-oriented ontologist? Is the city of New York the true romantic lead in this film? Does Greg Kinnear's character just utterly indict all of us nerds? Is this movie suffused with economic anxiety and yet bereft of class politics? Wasn't the late-90s internet aesthetic just the best thing there's ever been? Come with us, dear listener, and remember your bated breath as you waited for dial-up to connect.

The holidays are upon us! Family members are heading to airports all across the country in order to reunite with their loved ones -- potentially even to rekindle marriages under strain. That means it's time for us to revisit everyone's favorite Christmas movie, 1988's Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson and Bonnie Bedelia.We spend a lot of time talking about Ellis. Great character.

This episode is kind of bananas. In a good way, of course. What would it be like if Sisyphus could take a smoke break once in a while? Historically speaking, what pedagogical purpose did repeated Christological imagery serve for the church? What did this movie get right and wrong in its (then) fully hypothetical imagining of pandemic life? And what was the name of that two-person fighter arcade game that they had for a couple of years in the lobby of University Square Four cinemas in Madison, Wisconsin? (It was "Killer Instinct," it turns out)

When Bill Murray's character wakes up in the same bed day after day, with the same song playing on the radio, what happens to the other townspeople with whom he's interacted? Does the day just reset for them, too? Or are there massively multiversal timelines spinning off in every direction? Groundhog Day doesn't have the guts to ask these questions, but we do! Also: What kind of allegory or parable is this, exactly, and how religious is it supposed to be? Does the romance in a romantic comedy need to be good in order for a romantic comedy to be a good comedy? And if you were stuck in a timeloop as Bill Murray is, what would be the best song to wake up to Every. Single. Morning?

In which we try to make sense of so many things! This is a rom-com that is also an un-love story, featuring an anti-heroine. This is a film at least a little bit about how wealth is wasted on the wealthy. Is it good or an absolute aesthetic disaster that Julia Roberts's look in this movie is coming back? Is "cosmopolitan bliss" -- Dr. Schultz's wonderful phrase -- the happy ending that Julia Roberts's character ought to desire, or is it a consolation prize? Or both? Whatever else it is, the film is a love letter to the city of Chicago, to the act of saying goodbye to your 20s, and -- obviously -- to wide-legged pants.

In which we talk about the original Terminator and T2 together. NO discussion of posthumanism or cyborg ethics or the late 20th century depiction of AI, but quite a lot about motherhood, the apocalyptic possibility of the death of a child, the ethos of friendship and care in opposition to authoritarian and genocidal forces. And above all, an answer to this question: To which particular piece of contemporary military hardware might we compare a literal angel descended to bestow an annunciation on Sarah Connor?

This film is classic of the late-90s teen rom-com resurgence, and anyone who enjoyed filmic and TV comedies at any point over the past 20 years will recognize the murderer's row of screen talent assembled here. Talking to friends after seeing it in theaters, I distinctly recall declaring it "Shakespearean." Does that hold up?It is hard to see the anxieties around burgeoning identities, threats to masculinity, and teenage relations of domination and bullying in the innocent way it may once have been possible to do. But wow: Susan and I start off complaining about how Jennifer Love Hewitt's character is this typically empty female lead that the male protagonist simply has to win through virtue and pluck, etc. And by the end of our conversation, we have completely reversed ourselves on this. Is this Jennifer Love Hewitt's finest work?

Is it weird to think of The Matrix as agreeing with Leo Strauss's Plato on the moral worth of truth? Is the matrix itself -- and particularly the way that normies are subject to demonic possession by "agents" at any moment -- a metaphor for complicity in systems of oppression? How is keeping the faith in right relation with others involved in struggles for collective liberation? None of that was on our minds, perhaps, when we first saw the film, as you'll hear.

How much coke could $100,000 buy in the mid-80s? Is Turner and Hooch the second-best buddy cop movie of all time? Can we describe this film as a neo-noir, grappling (literally, in the climactic scene) with the dueling ways that foreign wars return home -- through nihilistic crime facilitated by the deadly arts learned in the military and the true-believer heroic violence in defense of a good and pure nation? Bet your sweet bippy we can.

What does it mean when the protagonist of a 90s rom-com (or, as Jay calls it, a "romactionedy") is a Gen-X hitman whose efforts to woo the one who got away (or really, the one whom he foolishly got away from) are crucial to what he clearly understands as his own redemption? Are the movie's final 10 minutes -- in which John Cusack's character is simultaneously professing his love for Minnie Driver's character and asking for her hand in marriage while also engaged in a firefight -- intended as a comedic take on action tropes? Or is it just a very typical action-movie ending? Asking the hard questions right here on the Point 10 podcast.

What does education policy have to do with a self-serious vengeance flick like Face/Off? Almost nothing, which makes it an ideal break from our day jobs! In this episode, Jack and I talk about what moviegoing used to be like, the way that writers and directors imagined high-flying criminal masterminds in a world before the antiheroes of prestige television, and the rock-solid science behind face transplants.