The fourteenth installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists introduces us to Alejandro, a young immigrant from El Salvador in dire need of an American sponsor - a path that entangles him with… a Tilda Swinton character. PROBLEMISTA is written and directed by Julio Torres, the mind behind the Papyrus skit on SNL, so that should tell you everything you need to know.

Thank you for checking this new project out, whether you are a long-time Contrarians fan or someone who’s just trying to listen to people talking positively about immigrants and negatively about fascism. If you have any recommendations for future entries in the series, let us know!

You really get a lot of leeway when your movie is 75 minutes long - and when its leads have the chops and chemistry to carry a feature. TRANCERS isn’t high art, but does it need to be? And if we are positive about it, do we need to justify why we are harsher on more polished films? We discuss that and more on this Real Talk segment!

Imagine the hubris necessary to release a movie about a time-traveling hero sent back to the 80s to protect someone from a futuristic killer… the same year The Terminator came out. But TRANCERS doesn’t coast purely on hubris and riffs on better sci-fi movies - it also features a young Helen Hunt doing her best to make an impression and graduate to better films. Is that why Trancers is better on the Tomatometer? Listen to Alex & Julio try to figure out!

You’d think the joint forces of James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez would produce an unstoppable box office juggernaut - a franchise that would capture the world’s imagination for decades… but that didn’t turn out to be the case with ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL. Its devoted audience is still holding out hope for a sequel, and who knows, we may get one someday, when Cameron tires of Pandora. But until then, all we can do is try to figure out what went wrong. Let’s do that in this Real Talk segment!

From James Cameron, they said. From the mind behind Titanic and Avatar, they said. But Jimmy C couldn’t even be bothered to let the actual director of ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, Robert Rodriguez, play with the kind of tech that makes Cameron flicks so visually impressive. So poor Alita had to settle for a direct-to-video Temu Pixar aesthetic and relied on the passionate fanbase from its manga origins to crawl to a fresh Tomatometer score. Listen to Alex & Julio as they wonder when Christoph Waltz became a cuddly old man!

The thirteenth installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists takes us to Chile, where infamous dictator Augusto Pinochet is revealed to be a vampire. Just another off-kilter biopic from Pablo Larrain, the man who brought us Jackie, Spencer, and now… EL CONDE.

Thank you for checking this new project out, whether you are a long-time Contrarians fan or someone who’s just trying to listen to people talking positively about immigrants and negatively about fascism. If you have any recommendations for future entries in the series, let us know!

Is the world big enough for standard Hollywood blockbuster adaptations of Homer’s work and artsier, brainier takes on the fall of Troy? Can Wolfgang Petersen’s TROY and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey co-exist? This super-sized Real Talk segment explores our feelings about Petersen’s epic AND also features a chat about Nolan’s smash-hit!

Odyssey-mania has taken over the world, and it hurts to see so many people have forgotten its unofficial 2004 prequel, TROY. Sure, it wasn’t a big hit with critics back then, but can we not appreciate the lost art of hot men trying to kill each other today? While Nolan’s movie is all about Odysseus running away from fights, Wolfgang Petersen’s adaptation of The Iliad is about Brad Pitt kicking butt and taking names. Listen to Alex & Julio geek out the way Homer intended!

Our Bedroom to Box Office journey has been a bit of a wild ride so of course the final stop would be Orson Welles’ long lost movie. The adult film industry connection was already discussed in a bonus interview we dropped right before this episode (check it out, lots of fun) but there is a lot more to unpack about THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. For example: did we actually like it? Listen to this Real Talk segment to find out!

Man, we cut Orson Welles way too much slack. The guy makes Citizen Kane at the beginning of his career, then he gets to coast for the rest of his life - and posthumously too! THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, a Welles’ joint he didn’t even get to finish, was received with pure adoration by critics even though it’s basically just a pretentious improv session from Orson and his buddies. Listen to Alex & Julio as they try to focus on the unexpected return of Peter Bogdanovich to the main feed, and close the Bedroom to Box Office Summer Event in style!