Have you ever been faced with the sheer terror of an episode of something? Be unacquainted no more! Gaze in horror as your mind unravels at the sight of so many episodes.
dudes rock, 1994
Who can argue with the sublime stupidity of Airheads? Michael Lehmann’s heavy metal update of Dog Day Afternoon (Rod-ney-King! Rod-ney-King!) is certainly not a masterpiece, but there are some inspired moments of goofiness, as well as committed performance from Brendan Fraser. Let’s get a petition for a cut without Michael Richards climbing through the vents in a lame Die Hard parody.
tfw you’re about to hitch a ride on the information superhighway.
In the spring of 1995, Johnny Mnemonic was released on an unready world as a would-be blockbuster. Instead, what the public got was a B-movie with arthouse sensibilities buried under beams of neon and plumes of fog. In 2021, director Robert Longo released a black and white cut of the film, unchanged except for a careful colour grading that turned its clanky ‘90s aesthetic into an alternate future noir. What other movie features a cybernetically enhanced dolphin and Dolph Lundgren as a deranged assassin-monk? No other movie but Johnny Mnemonic. In black and white.
two live dogs, but sometimes you kind of wish albert brooks’ character was a dead lion.
Hollywood loves taking apart the business of moviemaking, but satires on broadcast journalism are relatively scant. But who needs quantity when you’ve got Broadcast News? Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks and William Hurt play the world’s most toxic throuple* as the storms of Reagan-era economics start bashing network television news against the rocks. Listen below or find us on your podcatcher of choice, which is a sentene that the characters in Broadcast News could not imagine saying.
*Okay, it’s a love triangle, not a throuple. Let me have my dreams, people. They’re all I’ve got left.
remember when travolta was cool? i do.
The movie that poured a bottle of Perrier on the Elmore Leonard adaptation drought, Get Shorty is still one of the funniest and sharpest Hollywood satires ever made. Adam and Aidan make a case for why you should stop listening to them and just watch the movie. But if you’re determined to hear our thoughts on the matter, listen below or find us on your Applecaster of choice.
a dead lion and a live dog. or maybe it’s the other way round.
Hey folks! Ever wanted to watch California Split, but you’re barred by law from looking at George Segal’s face? Well, your horse has come in, because Ryan Boden and Anna Fleck made Mississippi Grind for just such an occasion. Adam and Aidan dig into this odd, dreamy character study about two gamblers who team up and head down to Mississippi for the score that will redeem their debts and wipe away all their problems. Just kidding, they can’t escape their problems. They’re their own worst problem. Listen below, or find us in that great Apple Podcast in the sky.
julia roberts wishing she was not in hook (1991)
In 1991, I saw Hook. I did not like it. In 2023, I saw Hook and did not like it again, but with the benefit of 32 years of experience and maturity, I found myself not liking it for different reasons. Despite my undying film snobbery, though, there are genuinely enjoyable moments in this strange tunneling into the anarchic joys of childhood. One thing’s for sure: Dustin Hoffman being mean to children will never get old. Listen below or rustle up an Apple Podcast for yourself.
live dogs, each and every one.
Some movies are perfect. Some movies have the coolest cast ever assembled. Some movies feature a Cray supercomputer hanging out in the background as a piece of set design. Sneakers is one of those movies. Listen below or Apple yourself a Podcasts.
collect call from a dead lion, will you accept the charges? the charges are nuclear apocalypse btw
If your child ever says to you: “Mommy/Daddy, what’s a cult movie?” you can pop out a Blu-ray of Miracle Mile. Like so many other movies we’ve talked about on Destroy All Culture, Miracle Mile largely takes place over the course of a single night, as Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards) attempts to flee the city with the girl of his dreams, Julie Peters (Mare Winningham). Why are they trying to get out? That’s both a spoiler and a twist that turns Miracle Mile from a meet-cute LA rom-com into a dread-soaked nightmare. Or it may just be a misguided tourism video for the La Brea Tar Pits. Who knows? Listen below or do the Apple Podcasts thing you do so well.
tfw you look out the window of the plane and you see a live dog
Nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be. On this week’s episode, Adam and Aidan talk about the strange and brilliant The Rocketeer - a movie that whiffed at the box office but has undergone a critical and popular reappraisal over the years. It’s like Master and Commander, if Russell Crowe had a jetpack and Paul Bettany was a struggling actress. Listen below or find us on Apple Podcasts or, as they say, wherever you get those dadgum things.
one live dog and one dead lion in a movie that valorizes dead lionhood.
For a certain demographic (Gen X and elder millennial men, I suppose), Master and Commander is a source of great pleasure. Maybe it’s the camaraderie between British tars (soaring souls, free as mountain birds etc.), the careful replication of shipboard conditions, the tense naval battles, or the joke about the lesser of two weevils (the best scene in the film by a nautical mile).
Or maybe they enjoy the way Russell Crowe squatted down over this movie and smeared his titanic ego over every frame. Don’t like it? Toe the line, nerd, we’re fighting the French. Listen below or spot us in dense fog with the podscope of your choice.
Live dog, no dead lioning.
Welcome to a lighthearted about a tragically deluded young girl who speaks to an imaginary audience and is clearly in need of institutional hel- WAIT EVERYONE ELSE CAN SEE THAT FOX? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
Casual listeners may wonder why two grown men are sitting down to talk about the live-action adaptation of Dora The Explorer. The first reason is that Adam kept assuring Aidan that it was worth watching. The second reason is: this movie is an insidious attack on our basic categories of reality. Dora is not an enthusiastic and slightly unhinged young woman who believes that an unseen audience needs help with basic Spanish; she is an object of imaginative quantum mass that distorts reality around her. Magic temples, musical numbers and talking foxes are all par for the course when she enters the scene. Anyway, listen below or find us on a lost iTune, somewhere in the heart of a dense internet.
the livest dog of all time.
The meta is strong with this one. In Robert Redford’s last feature film, the actor plays Forrest Tucker, an incorrigible bank robber who was known for being polite and charming as he cleaned out regional banks in several US states. Adam and Aidan talk about the parallel tracks of Redford and Tucker’s careers, as well as the way in which director David Lowery dives deep into the mythology of criminality and outlawhs in America. Most importantly, the film features Tom Waits in a supporting role, whose only stipulation for appearing in the film included the opportunity for a Waits-ian monologue. Which he gets. Listen below, or find us on your podmasher of choice.
Once upon a time, God in his lassitude made a John Patrick Shanley. Shanley looked around and called to God.
“What is my purpose?” Shanley asked.
“Go make movies, Shanley,” God said, shooing Shanley away.
“What?” Shanley said. “You created me to make movies and left me alone in this desolate universe? Just for that, I’ll make the most annoying, uneven, perversely enjoyable movies the world has ever seen!”
“Yeah, you do that,” God said. “I’m just making Pogs. Ha ha, Pogs”.
So Shanley made Joe vs The Volcano. One day God will watch it and perceive the magnitude of His folly.
charlie cale, the very definition of a live dog.
Just when you thought that television had become a junk yard of reality shows and prestige dramas, along come Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne with Poker Face. Adam and Aidan rank all ten episodes from season one. Listen below! Or, you know, find us on a podgregator of your choosing.
live dogs dancing on a dead lion
Fame! If you want to live forever/learn how to fly/feel it coming together/invoke tears in all who spot your approach, watch Alan Parker’s 1980 flick about students hustling and emoting their way through school. Listen below or locate us on your iTuner of choice.
now there’s a live dog.
Sooner or later, every Robert Altman fan has to come to terms with Popeye, the shambling edifice that sent Altman into Hollywood purgatory for the next decade. Adam and Aidan do a deep dive on the film, taking pratfalls and opening cans of spinach along the way. Listen below or find us on your podcatcher of choice.
four dead lions.
In 1996, Tom Hanks wrote and directed That Thing You Do! and the world would never be the same. For example, after 1996 you could refer to That Thing You Do! and not be accused of travelling to Earth from an alternate, Thing-You-Do-having dimension. Finally, Earth-Prime could lay claim to this charming tale of four Midwestern lads and their brief taste of fame.
Adam and Aidan review and discuss the highlights and peculiarities of That Thing You Do! - its insanely catchy tune, the best and most enduring part of the film; the joyful moment when The Wonders first hear their single on the radio; the peculiar lack of real conflict beyond the increasingly dull task of being a mid-tier music act in the ‘60s; and the deadly moment at the end, when Lamarr (Obba Babatundé) looks into the camera.
Lamarr, the only live dog in the movie.
Come on, Tom. Anyway, listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice!
Lori Petty in 1995’s tank girl (not pictured: a mutant colony of live dogs etc.)
In a just universe, Tank Girl was the movie that turned Lori Petty and into a massive star and Rachel Talalay into a big-budget movie director. Instead, we have to make do with this broken world, where the movie limped to screens in a cut so butchered that it often failed to make sense. Still, there’s plenty to love in what we get, from gonzo set pieces and animated interludes to Petty’s Looney Tunes performance. Are there any pretentious reviews out there calling her a distaff Mad Max? If not, you heard it here first. Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.
Dolph lundgren as he-man, the ultimate live dog.
By a large, Destroy All Culture hews to a certain standard in the films we cover. Qualified successes, neglected masterpieces, ambitious failures - that’s where we live.
Well never mind all that, because this episode dives into 1987’s Masters of the Universe. With the exception of Frank Langella’s interpretation of Skeletor as a skull-faced Richard III, this is a fiasco from top to bottom. But it’s unaccountably fun to watch and discuss. Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.
If ever there were a movie about a live dog (with a missing cat), this is it.
You fools! You thought Adam and Aidan were done with Robert Altman films, but no: we’ve only just begun. Altman’s take on Philip Marlowe feels strangely true to California noir: drenched in light, addled by sunstroke and nonchalantly shrugging off betrayal and doom as just another day in Los Angeles. As always, listen below or find us where you may.
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