DAC Episode 316 - The Random Canon #43: The Hidden (1987)

a live dog dealing with a soon-to-be-dead lion.

Welcome to one of Aidan’s favourite ‘80s cult sci-fi films. Also, welcome to an hour of Aidan trying to persuade Adam that The Hidden is a worthy addition to the canon of ‘80s cult sci-fi films. Is he successful? Spoiler alert: sorta.

Unfortunately for Adam, he’s not the one who does these writeups. The Hidden is a weird, rough gem of a movie that packs in gooey alien special effects with a pointed critique of Reagan-era greed and consumerism. You should watch this movie every Christmas with your family.

ADAM [imagined]: This movie was okay but it was derivative and kind of dumb. It looked like the filmmakers wanted to make a Terminator knockoff that was also a Thing knockoff, so I guess they succeeded?

AIDAN: You aren’t the real Adam so I win this argument. The Hidden rules.

ADAM [imagined] Foiled again or something.

AIDAN: Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 315 - The Random Canon #42: The Paper (1994)

now there’s a live dog.

Do you like relentless images of clocks? Are you looking for a movie obsessed with the minute details of printing presses? Are you nostalgic for a time when newspapers had their own printing presses? Are you nostalgic for a time when people read newspapers and didn’t get their worldview from @queefbugler420? If so, may we recommend Ron Howard’s The Paper? It has all these things and more (more meaning Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Randy Quaid, Marisa Tomei, and every character actor ever assembled from the mid ‘90s). Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 314 - Season Two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Ranked

one day to be a dead lion, but for now, a live dog.

Get hype! Get ranked! Adam and Aidan are laying out season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on the table and sorting them out. It was an astonishingly strong season, but rankings by internet randos are a necessary and brutal process. Which one is best? Which ones didn’t quite work? You will know the definitive answer if you listen below, or find us on your pod emanator of choice.

DAC Episode 313 - The Random Canon #41: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

in matters animal, vegetable and mineral, he is the very model of a modern live dog.

In 1988, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was released, and the world would never be particularly different afterwards. One of the shaggiest of Terry Gilliam’s shaggy dog stories, the movie gained notoriety for its troubled production and its callous treatment of Sarah Polley. Adam and Aidan go over the highs and lows of one of Aidan’s favourite films from the late ‘80s. Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 312 - The Random Canon #40: Airheads (1994)

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.

DAC Episode 311 - The Random Canon #39 - Johnny Mnemonic in Black and White (1995/2021)

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.

DAC Episode 310 - The Random Canon #38 - Broadcast News (1987)

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.

DAC Episode 309: The Random Canon #37 - Get Shorty (1995)

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.

DAC Episode 308: The Random Canon #36 - Mississippi Grind (2015)

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.

DAC Episode 307: The Random Canon #35 - Hook (1991)

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.

DAC Episode 306: The Random Canon #34 - Sneakers (1992)

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.

DAC Episode 305: The Random Canon #33 - Miracle Mile (1988)

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.

DAC Episode 304: The Random Canon #32 - The Rocketeer (1991)

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.

DAC Episode 303: The Random Canon #31 - Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

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.

DAC Episode 302: The Random Canon #30 - Dora and The Lost City of Gold (2019)

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.

DAC Episode 301: The Random Canon #29 - The Old Man and The Gun (2018)

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.

DAC Episode 300: The Random Canon #28 - Joe vs The Volcano (1990)

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.

DAC Episode 299: Poker Face

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.

DAC Episode 298: The Random Canon #27 - Fame (1980)

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.

DAC Episode 297: The Random Canon #26 - Popeye (1980)

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.