There came a time in Paul Thomas Anderson’s career when he decided he wanted to try to be funny again. So he called up Joaquin Phoenix, gave him Irish sideburns, and told him to do his version of The Dude from The Big Lebowski. And so INHERENT VICE was born, and it was branded with a fresh Tomatometer score, and PTA got to be silly again, forsaking narrative clarity in the process. Listen to Alex & Julio as they try to follow Doc Sportello’s investigation and lament the waste of an interesting supporting cast!

Steven Soderbergh. Sasha Grey. Barack Obama. This thing should write/direct itself, right? So what’s the deal with THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, really, and is there anything to the fact that it’s basically impossible to stream online? Does the movie have anything to say about escorts? About America? Or is Soderbergh just having fun in between mainstream projects? All this and more in this Real Talk segment!

2009 Hollywood rolled the dice on Steven Soderbergh and got artsy, experimental Sodes. THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE looks like it was shot on an old iPhone - which is an insane aesthetic choice when your protagonist is played by Sasha Grey. But there’s also running bits about the pre-Obama recession and lots of Bourne-cam, so critics were positive enough about the film to make it fresh on the Tomatometer. Listen to Alex & Julio as they try to make chronological sense of Sasha’s adventures and wonder if Barry O. ever watched this in the White House screening room.

The eleventh installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists forces us to confront what happens when hateful ideologies spread to children, and features Taika Waititi prancing around as an imaginary Hitler. It’s JOJO RABBIT!

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’d think that after spending an hour trying to be funny about ROMANCE for Contrarians Corner, having an honest conversation about the movie for Real Talk would be much easier. Not quite. This one’s very much not for us, so we may end up with more questions than usual - which doesn’t mean it isn’t a good talk. Just don’t expect us to “get it”.

Foreplay is over, as Bedroom to Box Office goes full-artsy, full-French, full-frontal. Most people think of movies like The Matrix and The Phantom Menace when they think of 1999, but real film buffs think of Catherine Breillat’s ROMANCE - an underappreciated sexual drama that deserves more than its rotten 49% Tomatometer score. Listen to Alex & Julio as they navigate the treacherous waters surrounding the most explicit movie they’ve covered in a long time!

Well, Alex stretched the B2B gimmick pretty thin for this episode - no, Kurt Fuller did not star in an adult film early in his career - but the important thing is we got THE RUNNING MAN in Contrarians Canon. The better version too (not that Edgar Wright’s take offered much competition.) So why did Arnie’s failed to connect with the world the way his other 1987 movie, Predator, did? We have theories. Listen to them in this Real Talk segment!

We like Glen Powell as much as the next film fan, but let’s get real. There’s only one Running Man, and his name is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Critics and audiences weren’t quite ready for Arnie in full wisecracking mode though, and Paul Glaser’s 1987 adaptation of Stephen King’s THE RUNNING MAN is branded with a rotten 59% Tomatometer score. Listen to Alex & Julio as they welcome a cavalcade of favorite performers back to the show and luxuriate in 80s nostalgia!

The tenth installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists introduces us to the Gangoli family - first generation Indian immigrants to America. Familiar faces Irrfan Khan and Tabu play the parents, but the big marketing angle was Kal Penn’s dramatic turn as their son, he of the multiple names throughout the movie. THE NAMESAKE, based on a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, directed by Mira Nair, was certainly an important step in Penn branching out from his Harold and Kumar persona, but it’s also a gentle, heartfelt portrayal of what it’s like to have two homelands.

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!

How much sleaziness is too much sleaziness? Is Elmore Leonard’s 52 PICK-UP as nasty as its John Frankenheimer adaptation? Does the movie deserve its somewhat forgotten status in the director’s filmography, or should we all push for a 52 PICK-UP re-evaluation? This and more in this Real Talk segment - including a roll call of all the adult performers in the infamous party sequence!