DAC Episode 431 - Baby Assassins (2021)

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A young Japanese woman wearing a maid outfit with cat ears, holding a gun to a man in a blue jacket.

live dog, cat ears.

Set in a world where more people need assassinating than a John Wick spinoff, Baby Assassins is pure joy. Yugo Sakamoto’s first installment in the BACU (three movies and a series so far) follows Chisato (Akari Takahishi) and Mahiro (Saori Izawa, who also has a career as a stunt artist), two aimless slackers who are just as happy laying around on the couch as they are murdering a building full of goons. They end up on the wrong side of a yakuza boss and things go predictably awry. Our advice: go watch this film, then come back and join in as we babble about it. Listen below or find us where podcasts play mobile games and eat oden.

DAC Episode 431 - Baby Assassins (2021)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 430 - Vampire's Kiss (1988)

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an undead lion

Can someone explain Nicholas Cage’s accent work?

DAC Episode 430 - Vampire's Kiss (1988)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 429 - Tootsie (1982)

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1982. The year that brought you E.T., The Thing and Blade Runner also brought you Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie. What do these movies have in common? They’re all going to be remade by Lee Cronin in 2027. Listen below as Adam and Aidan break down the script and examine the remarkable technologies that gave us Dabney Coleman’s moustache. And more!

Also, why do I keep typing Tootise instead of Tootsie? Is this how Lee Cronin plans to get around the rights issues? Lee Cronin’s Tootise (2027)?

DAC Episode 429 - Tootsie (429)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 428 - Now You 2 and 3 Me

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Seven people lined up in front of a library backdrop.

seven live lions. ruffalo hologram not pictured.

Are you looking closely? Well that’s a shame, because you’re looking at one of the steepest downgrades of a franchise whose greatest peak could best be described as “foothills”. 2016’s Now You See Me 2 introduces Lizzy Caplan in place of Isla Fisher, which is a delightful addition (it also gives Woody Harrelson more to do with the introduction of a twin brother, and to that I say, more please), and a plot that I had trouble remembering within seconds of the movie ending. Maybe I was hypnotized? Maybe the movie was a gigantic illusion? A fun and worthy sequel to a fun and forgettable first film.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, on the other hand, is an intermittently enjoyable but largely lousy follow-up. The Gen Z kids grabbing the magic mantle from the original crew is fun (Dominic Sessa? Justice Smith? Ariana Greenblatt? We love it), but the budgetary cuts and the Hulu streaming-grade cinematography and direction robs the film of its predecessors’ charms. But hey, we get Isla Fisher back along with everyone else! That’s fun. Listen below to our musings on the whole affair below, or find us on your iTuner of choice.

DAC Episode 438 - Now You See Me 2, Now You 3 Me
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan

DAC Episode 416 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

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what is going on with ethan’s hair in this movie? It’s not the crewcut-adjacent trims of 1,3,5 and 7. it’s not the gorgeous flop of 2,4 and 6. this shaggy deal looks like it’s trying to integrate both sides of the hunthair persona. pick a lane, hunt. a solomon lane.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is unhinged. It insists that it’s a separate entity from Dead Reckoning Part One but spends most of its runtime answering the questions posed in its predecessor. It wants to be a genuine finale to the franchise but leaves the door wide open for more installments. Its prologue is a full 30 minutes’ worth of flashbacks within flashbacks that serve to explain things that are also happening in the prologue? The pacing is an absolute mess, the dialogue is agonizingly self-serious, and the final aerial action sequence is upstaged by an underwater action sequence from earlier in the film.

But here’s the thing: if you watch this with Dead Reckoning (Part One!) fresh in your memory, it’s good. It’s good, actually! I never thought I’d type those words. But here we are. Also, the underwater action sequence with Cruise swimming through an abandoned submarine? One of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in a movie. Seriously.

DAC Episode 416 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 415 - Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (lol) (2023)

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woah fellas, let’s not bother hayley atwell, she’s blameless here

The best thing about the seventh installment of the Mission: Impossible is its strange status as ‘Part One’ of a one-part story. The eighth movie, when it eventually arrived, had grown a protective shell around itself during the many delays in its production, leaving part one wriggling and vulnerable, a larva of pure setup crawling blindly in circles in search of payoff.

In Dead Reckoning Part One Of One, Ethan Hunt finally encounters an enemy that poses a challenge to his bottomless well of will and resourcefulness: a superbeing called The Entity. It’s an AI that wants… wait, what does it want? Why is it doing all the weird stuff that it’s doing? Why is anything at all happening as it does? I guess we’ll find out in Part Two! Womp-womp. Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 415 - Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (2023)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 414 - Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

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footloose, footloose, kick off your sunday shoes

Children, gather ‘round, and I will tell you of a time before plagues and strikes, before LLMs crawled over our data like soul-eating spiders, back when greedy corporations made honest blockbusters, the kind you could see in an actual movie theatre. The very last of those films was called Mission: Impossible - Fallout, and it starred a man who fell from planes and ran on roofs and wrestled men in bathrooms. His name is lost to history, but people knew him as ‘Mr. Movies’. They say he ate a dozen buckets of popcorn per day. Some say he is still alive, having transcended his physical body and existing as a beam of light that shows a constantly repeating image of a train arriving at a station.

DAC Episode 414 - Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
Adam P Knave and Aidan Morgan
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DAC Episode 412 - Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

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A white man with floppy hair clings to a glass tower. He appears to be high-fiving his reflection.

ethan hunt struggling with ethan hunt for ethan hunt supremacy.

More like GOAT Protocol, amirite? The last MI installment before the McQuarrie half of the franchise, Ghost Protocol is a banger of a blockbuster. A blocker of a bustbanger? A buster of a bangblocker? Whatever, it’s great.

Let me outline the greatness for you: Tom Cruise has let his hair grow out again. This is always a win. The action sequences and stunt setpieces are clean and delightful. The story only appears to revolve around world-ending stakes, but in truth, Ghost Protocol is driven by a competition between Ethan Hunt and Ethan Hunt. Can he outrun and outperform the tiny superego figure that commands him to climb towers and chase villains? Yes. Yes he can.

Enough talking up this movie. Go watch it. Or listen to Adam and Aidan dissect it for a bit. Find us on your podclimber of choice or do that thing where you listen below.

DAC Episode 412 - Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
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