98 - Mute

You know how the worst part of Film Noir is the cheesy over stylized dialogue? Duncan Jones figured out a way around that! Unfortunately, critics had trouble dealing with an Amish detective who can’t speak and so the Netflix Original Movie, MUTE, was deemed rotten. Listen to Alex, Julio and Netflix expert Dan Brenic (from the Netflix ‘N Swill podcast) extol the virtues of this true spiritual sequel to Bladerunner! Be ready for lots of gushing over Paul Rudd’s new villainous attitude and mustache! And oh man, the SECRETS Justin Theroux is keeping, babe!

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97 - Adventureland

If ADVENTURELAND is to be believed, there was a point in Greg Mottola’s life where he was hooking up with two gorgeous girls despite looking and acting like a standard Jesse Eisenberg character. Welcome to ADVENTURELAND! A fantasy where all it takes to impress your peers is a bag of tiny joints! A film where Deadpool loses Kirsten Stewart to Mark Zuckerberg! A thinly veiled autobiography fully driven by First World Problems! Listen to Alex and Julio as they break down why this sort of thing was a lot better when someone like Cameron Crowe did it.

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Bonus! - Wes Craven's New Nightmare Commentary

To say this podcast has had a contentious relationship with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is putting it mildly. Could that change thanks to Wes Craven’s last hurrah in the series? Listen to Alex, Julio and special guest Reid Lansford as they deliver a running commentary to NEW NIGHTMARE - the remastered super meta revitalization of Freddy Kruger!

And don’t forget to attend the Otherworlds Sci-Fi Film Festival this weekend!

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Bonus! - The Fly (1958)

The Fly? What fly? This movie should’ve been called “The Man Covering His Head With a Jacket”. Listen to Alex and Julio as they ease out of The Autumn of the Remakes by discussing a 50s monster movie classic and discover Canadian scientists are even more irresponsible than American ones! Not just that, but it also turns out that Vincent Price was not above slumming it for cash!

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96 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Now this is how you do it. If you’re going to dedicate a feature film to mindless carnage, then at least make it look beautiful. Listen to Alex and Julio tackle the stylish 2003 remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, a movie that proves it’s a lot easier to enjoy savagery when it’s happening to gorgeous people under a permanent Instagram filter! Is Jessica Biel’s new millennium scream queen the MVP or would R. Lee Ermey take that honor for his powerhouse performance as a guy who definitely doesn’t want you to take his guns? Only one way to find out!

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95 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

There’s no way Texas was ever this bad, even in the 70s. Shame on Tobe Hooper for giving birth to a long running smear campaign against The Lone Star State! Listen to Alex and Julio discuss the most uneventful build-up to the most tasteless carnage ever put on a sensationalistic piece of film! And stick around for Real Talk, where they’ll search for an answer to that universal question… “WHY”.

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Bonus! - The Embries 2019

Celebrating five years of Contrarian Podcasting! We have games, we have clips from past episodes and, of course, we have all the awards. The Embries, The Rouseys, The Ruffalo and The Gad. If you’ve been listening to us for a while, this will be a nice trip down memory lane. If this is your first episode of The Contrarians… You might be a little confused? But still have fun? No idea. Let us know.

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94 - The Upside

Americans. We take care of business. We fix things. We get the rights to a milquetoast French comedy and give it some oomph, make it relevant to our social issues, throw Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston in there. We’ll even add some Australian spice by giving Nicole Kidman a role. Basically, what we are saying is that THE UPSIDE, maligned as it is by the Tomatometer, is the movie The Intouchables should’ve been. Listen to Alex and Julio as they grow even prouder to be citizens of the United States while listing all the ways in which Neil Burger outperformed his French counterparts.

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93 - The Intouchables

France: a land of almost utopian racial equality. A land that gave us THE INTOUCHABLES, a much beloved film that pretends to be about friendship but actually is about psychological mind games and the most toxic relationship on that side of the pond. So much for the American remake to fix! Listen to Alex and Julio as they try to figure out how the unemployment services work in Europe, how rich you need to be to qualify for smutty junk mail and whether Omar Sy has dethroned John Travolta as the best dancer in the world.

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Bonus! - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)

Long-time listeners already know how we feel about the Walter Mitty remake (if you don’t, check episode 50) but the original SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, starring Danny Kaye - the John Travolta of The 40s - is a completely different beast. It’s such a weird, contrived “star vehicle”, Alex and Julio needed the help of Ryan and Bartek, from the SPIT & POLISH podcast to analyze it properly! Listen as we find it easy to resist Kaye’s charms and struggle to endure the random fantasy sequences. And all while Ryan humble-brags about his knowledge of classic cinema!

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