Movie Time Machine : A Retro Movie Review Podcast · chad the friend

Trifecta Movie Reviews: 'Super Mario Bros.', 'AIR', &'Dirty Harry'

April 17, 2023·52 min·5 clips

Chad opens the show with the same warm, wandering energy. He welcomes listeners back to Movie Time Machine and sets the retro-movie hangout tone right away. James comes in as the familiar sidekick, bringing the encyclopedic memory and easy back-and-forth. Before the movie talk really settles, they drift into a Succession side note. That becomes a Hope Davis memory and then one of those half-joking, half-serious pop-culture detours the show likes to follow. The episode is in no hurry to get to the review. It keeps the table-chat feeling alive first. From there, the hosts move into the movie lineup, which includes Shrek, AIR, and Dirty Harry. The Shrek conversation opens the door to animation talk and casting talk. They joke about a new Shrek and the idea of keeping the same animation style. That leads naturally into a broader riff on voice casting. Eddie Murphy comes up as a great example of a performer who makes an animated character land. Donkey gets named, and Mushu from Mulan gets the same treatment. The point is simple and delivered in the show's plainspoken way. Good voice casting can carry more weight than people expect. AIR becomes the center of gravity for the episode's clearest opinions. James says he likes Ben Affleck as a director and points to Argo, The Town, and Gone Baby Gone as proof. He also admits he had almost no interest in seeing a movie about Nike shoes. Chad leans into that reaction and pushes on why anyone should care about such a dry topic. James answers by separating the premise from the execution. He enjoys the movie overall, but says the slow parts really do feel slow. That complaint lands cleanly because the show does not dress it up. It just says the quiet parts are quiet. The discussion treats AIR as a movie that works in spite of how unexciting it sounds on paper. Dirty Harry shifts the tone again. The hosts frame it as an action movie that is meant to be brutal and direct. James likes that energy. He says he did not need a lot of dialogue from it. The closer points more toward the filmmaking craft than the script itself. That turns into the final joke about storyboards carrying the load. The episode ends the same way it starts. It is loose, conversational, and happy to wander from one pop-culture reference to another. The movie talk sits inside that banter instead of trying to overpower it. What comes through most is the easy rhythm between the hosts and their shared memory of movies old and new.

As heard by us

Loose retro movie talk that moves from Succession and Hope Davis to Shrek and AIR.

Movie Time Machine settles into a loose, friend-on-the-couch rhythm that keeps the conversation moving from one memory to the next. It starts with a Succession tangent, brings in Hope Davis, then drifts through Shrek and AIR before landing again on Ben Affleck as a director.

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Why you'd press play

You want a laid-back Air review with hangout energy.

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