Load Bearing Beams

In an episode Laci calls "Rocky House" but that Matt calls "Rockin' At the Dollhouse," Laci and Matt discuss the feel-good movie of all time, Rocky (1976) and the feel-bad movie of all time, Welcome To the Dollhouse (1996). What follows is weirdly intense discussion about mortality, bullying, and happiness. Also: Matt's senior class trip to Disney World sucked. Time stamps: Rocky: 06:08 Welcome To the Dollhouse: 22:37   Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com   Twitter: @LoadBearingPod

In an episode Laci calls "Ever Men" but that Matt calls "X1: X-Men Ever After," the pair discuss Ever After (1998) and X-Men (2000), two movies that, to everyone's surprise, are both pure delights!  Ever After, Drew Barrymore deploys a most unconvincing British accent to play the French commoner Danielle de Barbarac who pulls off a most sinister rouse and pretends to be the Comtesse de Lancret! Love ensues. Good movie. In X-Men, Hugh Jackman/Jack Hughman finds himself caught up in a war between Magneto, that most dastardly of villains who can create magnetic fields, and Professor X, who can read people's minds unless they put on a helmet. Slashing ensues. Good movie. Time stamps: Ever After: 03:54 X-Men: 20:17   Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com Twitter: @LoadBearingPod

Jumanji Fever is sweeping America—nay, the world—and Load Bearing Beams catches the fever by viewing Welcome To the Jungle's predecessor, 1995's much more somber, pensive, and scaled-down film, Jumanji. A listener selected this movie for the show, as neither Laci nor Matt was a big fan of it growing up. But this movie is much beloved by millions of people, so the show sets out to figure out why. It's a movie in which Robin Williams doesn't get to Robin Williams, and the plot revolves largely around dead and emotionally unavailable parents... we have a winner? Also: Laci has some feelings about Toodles, the levitating, tool-dispensing clock from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in the newest edition of "Mickey's Clubhouse Clubhouse."    Time stamps: Mickey's Clubhouse Clubhouse: 03:15 Jumanji: 10:07   Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com   Twitter: @LoadBearingPod  

In an episode Laci calls "The Future Of the Empire" and Matt calls "Recording the Future," Load Bearing Beams examines Back To the Future, Part II (1989) and Empire Records (1995). One a huge hit, the other a giant flop with a long afterlife on home video, and both a large source of internet chatter and memes. Back To the Future, Part II was one of the first mainstream American movies to explore the implications and potential paradoxes of time travel. How does its depiction of time travel and the future world of 2015 hold up in 2018? And Empire Records is the tale of a magical kingdom where a record store in the downtown of a small city somehow sells enough CDs and cassettes to pay a huge staff of misfits and transact $9,000 in cash in a single day! Even in 1995, could this possibly have been realistic?  Time stamps: Back To the Future, Part II: 02:30 Empire Records: 31:02   Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com   Twitter: @LoadBearingPod

It's a super-sized Listener's Choice episode in which we cover THREE MOVIES! That's right, we watched all three Austin Powers films at the suggestion of a listener, and we dig deep into all three on this podcast.  First up, it's Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), a low-budget movie with an unlikely premise that was a moderate hit and somehow spawned an immensely popular and profitable franchise thanks to impressions that are easy to do and a litany of quotable memes. But how is it as a movie?  Then, it's Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) or, as it's known in Singapore, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shioked Me (which means, "Austin Powers: The spy who made me feel good."). We can't believe there was ever a world without Mini-Me! And finally, we come to Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002), co-starring Beyoncé Knowles of the religious pop song group Destiny's Child and Michael Caine of Jaws: The Revenge. Laci watched this movie 50 times as a teenager. What does she think of it now?? Time

Back before Johnny Depp sucked, he starred in a movie called Blow (2001), the story of a mediocre, uninteresting drug dealer who can do no wrong... until he can do no right! Does this film pack the emotional punch for adult Laci that it did for teen Laci?  Then, LBB examines Zack Snyder's Watchmen (2009), a bloated, confused, utterly fascinating adaptation of the classic graphic novel. Laci and Matt debate whether Rorshach is a flawed but admirable hero, or an overgrown male junior high school student who scrawls Nietzsche quotes in his notebook. Matt loved this movie so much that it inspired him to read a comic book for the first (and still only!) time in his life. Could this movie possibly hold up?    Time stamps: Blow: 03:32 Watchmen: 21:05   Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com   Twitter: @LoadBearingPod

A listener suggested The Lost Boys (1987), and LBB watches and reviews it. This movie is kind of delightful and, according to Laci, is a thorough and unrelenting look at the destructiveness of heroin addiction. Matt dislikes Haim, likes Feldman. ALSO: We debut our new recurring feature, the Mickey's Clubhouse Clubhouse, in which Laci pokes holes in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a TV program for toddlers.   Time stamps: Mickey's Clubhouse Clubhouse: 04:25 The Lost Boys: 12:36   Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com Twitter: @LoadBearingPod

LBB is back for a new year! First up: It's the first X-Files movie: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998). Matt loved this television show as a teenager and, by proxy, loved this movie. What does Laci think, having never seen it and being only minimally familiar with the TV series? Also: Much discussion about TV shows turned into movies. Then, Laci reexamines The Boondock Saints (1999), a movie about which she says, "It's something that I loved a lot and very intensely for about four years, because I thought it meant I was a certain kind of cool girl who, just, you know, got it." But how does it hold up now, and what did Matt think, after having preexisting prejudices against this movie despite never having seen it?   Time stamps:   The X-Files: Fight the Future: 05:46   The Boondock Saints: 34:01   Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com Twitter: @loadbearingpod

SPOILERS for this bonus mini-episode! Matt and Laci, fresh from having seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi, share their thoughts with each other. Matt's a huge Star Wars fan, Laci until had recently had never seen the original movies but is a big fan of The Force Awakens... what did they think? Again, please do not listen if you haven't yet seen this movie. We SPOIL the porg out of this film. SPOIL SPOIL SPOIL Darth Vader is Luke's father!   

Matt is finding it very difficult to think of anything other than Star Wars two days before The Last Jedi comes out, so the gang revisits the Star Wars saga by looking at The Empire Strikes Back (1980), widely considered the best film in the series. BUT FIRST it's Ron Howard's Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), a movie that takes the Grinchverse and expands it into directions you never knew you wanted... because you didn't want them. Yeah, this movie's actually very boring and visually unappealing and largely forgettable, but it at least leads to a long conversation about the merits of Jim Carrey. THEN: The first episode of Load Bearing Beams started with Laci viewing the original Star Wars film (which, by the way, should only be called Star Wars), and Matt insisted that the flaws she found in the film would be corrected in the sequel. Surely she must love or at least see the masterful merits of The Empire Strikes Back, no?  ALSO: Laci explains why crooners are the worst. Time stamps: The Grinc

Let's talk What About Bob: In this Frank Oz picture from 1991, Bill Murray plays Bob, and he is just so silly but you can't help but love him, the scamp! And Richard Dreyfuss is his cranky therapist who can't get his family to see how annoying his patient is, because the patient has followed his family on their vacation, see, but even though this is highly inappropriate and predatory behavior, Dreyfuss's family is charmed out of their very seats by Bob and his antics. We are all Richard Dreyfuss's Dr. Leo Marvin. We are all Bob. In the words of Robert Frost, "Where I have fallen on the Marvin/Bob spectrum on has made all the difference." Then, Laci and Matt discuss Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1991). How does this film hold up today, given Allen's biography and the cultural climate of the current moment? Is this movie a confession? What does it say about you if you still want to enjoy Woody Allen's movies? Yeah, this was a pretty heavy episode, where even talking about the "friend zone" was weighty

Laci and Matt return, if not better than ever then at least not diminished, to discuss the films Jurassic Park III (2001) and My Girl (1991).  First up, it's Jurassic Park III, a movie selected by Matt because he loves the first Jurassic Park and this one also has dinosaurs on an island, so it'll do. The Roth-Stokeses assess this movie and its place in the larger Jurassic canon, especially when compared with Jurassic World. Then it's My Girl. What can you say about My Girl? This is a movie. Originally called Born Jaundiced, this treacly piece of '70s nostalgia coheres brilliantly with the type of treacly '90s nostalgia in which this podcast traffics so frequently.  Time stamps: Jurassic Park III [07:55] My Girl [27:40] Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com Twitter: @LoadBearingPod

Buffy is a beloved TV show to many, but it doesn't mean s**t to Laci, who prefers the 1992 film [05:55] of the same name. It's the tale of a Chosen One cheerleader doing battle against the occult and being courted by 56-year-old Luke Perry. What about this movie so spoke to Laci as a young person, and how does she feel about it now? And how funky is your chicken?  Then: Citizen Kane (1941) [20:30] is generally considered to be the greatest English-language film ever made. Matt has seen it many times, but it's been a while since the last time, and he's a little nervous in showing it to Laci for the first time. What do their fresh eyes have to say about this classic? Does Orson Welles age convincingly? Were people really depressed in the 1800s? I'll bet you five you're not alive if you don't enjoy this ep'.  Time stamps: Buffy the Vampire Slayer [05:55] Citizen Kane [20:30] Website: www.loadbearingbeams.com Twitter: @LoadBearingPod

As an October hurricane heads for their house, Laci and Matt turn their attention to Napoleon Dynamite (2004) and Blade Runner (1982), a set of movies about inscrutable men and the women who can't help but love them.  First, Laci and Matt tackle Napoleon Dynamite [03:10], a movie about which Laci no longer knows how she feels, but which Matt calls "not unenjoyable." But does this collection of awkward quirks ultimately amount to something more than Mad Libs: The Movie? And is the secret to this film's enduring legacy merely that Napoleon's voice is easy to impersonate?  Then there's Blade Runner [23:27], a film utterly ruined for Laci by how much better its subject was handled in Westworld. This movie inspires one of this podcast's most heated arguments: Is Harrison Ford intentionally playing against type in Blade Runner, or is it exactly his type? 

We welcome Sara and Steve Jones to discuss A Little Princess (1995) [02:00] and Red Dawn (1984) [29:00]. We ran the gamut of topics in this episode: guerilla warfare, survivalism, what makes us cry in movies, chimney sweeps, the Ramayana, the Cold War, Jeff Goldblum's daughter from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, amnesia, Harry Potter, and much more. And is that Ser Davos, the Onion Knight, as the titular little princess's father? It is! Enjoy!

We discuss Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), one of Matt's favorite movies ever. Laci knew nothing about it, but was assured by her husband that its many puzzlebox mysteries would pay off in the end. Do they? We also discuss what predictions about the future got wrong and get to the bottom of whether or not we're all living in a computer simulation.  It (1990) is an annoyingly-titled movie* about the bond among a group of children in the 1950s and their whimsical adventures. In other words, it's computer engineered to aggravate Matt. In our discussion of this chronicle of the Losers Club and their battles against an evil alien clown-spider, we discuss, among other things, trypophobia, 90s Friday-night sitcoms, Laci's adolescent desire to be the girl who hangs out with the guys, and what it means for a topic to be Buzzfeed-y. Also, we give our hot take on clowns, which is that they are not scary.  *Not actually a movie.

Like the home video release of 1990's It, we're splitting this episode into two VHS tapes. In cassette 1 we discuss Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), one of Matt's favorite movies ever. Laci knew nothing about it, but was assured by her husband that its many puzzlebox mysteries would pay off in the end. Do they? We also discuss what predictions about the future got wrong and get to the bottom of whether or not we're all living in a computer simulation. 

Your married co-hosts debate Laci's grand unifying theory of movies. Must the movie have stakes? How big must these stakes be? (Big.) And can the stakes get bigger than they are in All the President's Men (1976) [05:52], in which the president's top aids are tied to a burglary operation via reporters' digging? Together, we dig in. Then we fall in love with Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette in True Romance (1993) [29:30]. Awwwwww! Also: What's up with Quentin Tarantino? 

Drop of the Fred with the Sickness in this spooktacular examination of childhood mental illness and mindless consumerism. That's right, it's 1991's Drop Dead Fred (Rotten Tomatoes score: 9%) and 1978's Dawn Of the Dead!  Again, Drop Dead Fred [02:48] has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 9%. Nine! Its reputation is far worse than any other movie covered on this show. Is it really that bad? Why is Laci is so fond of movies with silly stop motion effects? Is this movie actually a nuanced look at depression, divorce, and loneliness? Maybe!  And then there's Dawn Of the Dead [19:05], helmed by the recently-deceased George A. Romero. This classic of the zombie apocalypse genre with its commentary on American capitalism in the late 20th century mainly leads to a 30-minute conversation about malls.  Follow us on Twitter @LoadBearingPod, and visit us online at www.loadbearingbeams.com!

What do we really know? Is the future predetermined? Are human beings really free? These questions and more are addressed and resolved in the two movie selections Load Bearing Beams, episode 9: Alex Proyas's Knowing (2009) [03:30] and Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995) [32:10]. Matt argues that even though Knowing is lumped in with the terrible cash-in movies of Nicolas Cage's later career, it's actually a thrilling and thought-provoking film. Is he right? And could anything be scarier than a weirdo kid furiously scribbling numbers on a piece of paper?  Also: Laci explains how Clueless is why she's able to sleep at night.