The Rewind Movie Podcast

“Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it.” We’re spending our Rewind Christmas in Gotham, with Tim Burton’s eccentric 1992 comic book sequel Batman Returns.An abandoned aristocratic child, born with unfortunate physical deformities, grows up in the sewers below the city streets, eventually waging a circus-centric war on the populace at the big tree-lighting ceremony some three decades later. The guest of honour at that event, business magnate Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), is kidnapped, coming face-to-face with The Penguin (Danny DeVito). The fast-thinking Shreck concocts a plan - orchestrate Penguin’s reemergence into polite society, and use him to depose and replace the incumbent mayor for his own greedy ends. Caught up in these machinations is mild-mannered executive assistant Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), seemingly murdered for learning too much, who finds herself resurrected as a slinky, whip-wielding feline agent of mayhem and revenge. Also Batman (Michael Keaton) is there.After the pop culture phenomenon of his 1989 original, Tim Burton kept corporate paymasters Warner Bros. waiting, establishing himself as the inky, gothy outcast du jour with passion project Edward Scissorhands. When he finally returned to the franchise, he amped up the weirdness as the German Expressionism-meets-Gothic Noir aesthetic of the city reached new heights of abstraction, matched by a fevered, weird psychosexuality. But, is it Batman? Join Gali, Devlin, Patrick and Matt under the abandoned zoo for a festive feast of gadgets, goo, and grotesquerie.Pick up merchandise based on this episode’s artwork here!If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com.

“Okay. But dogs can look up.” We’re grabbing a nice cold pint and waiting for all this to blow over by spending our HalloRe’ewind episode with Edgar Wright’s beloved Brit rom-zom-com Shaun of the Dead, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.Developmentally-arrested 29-year-old electrical store employee Shaun’s slacker lifestyle, mostly spent whiling away his nights with crass childhood friend Ed in the local pub, sees his girlfriend Liz give him the boot at a most inopportune moment - the advent of a zombie apocalypse that seems only slightly more grim and shambling than your average workday in North London. Armed only with a box of 12” records, a child-sized cricket bat, and his flatmate’s ‘borrowed’ Renault Megane, Shaun tries to rise to the occasion to bring Ed, Liz, and his mum to an impenetrable fortress (which is also, coincidentally, his idea of a romantic nightspot) …his local pub.Capitalising on the cult success of Channel 4’s Spaced, director Wright and star/co-writer Simon Pegg hoped to break a streak of poor quality TV-to-film transitions from British comedy stars, by infusing the movie with their genuine love for classic 70s/80s zombie fare. Matt and Devlin discuss the film’s part in the 2000s zombie renaissance and the British film industry’s brief hot streak, and talk influences, ripoffs, zombies-as-allegory, and other pearls of wisdom we gleaned from a Guinness Extra Cold beermat. If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill. 

As we are still on a short break and preparing our Halloween 2024 instalment we thought we would celebrate the OG for the podcast...Halloween III: Season of the Witch as a LATE RETRURN FEE, enjoy reliving the horror and we will see you next week with a brand new episode!BOO! It’s Devlin’s favourite time of year, and he’s selected the strange outlier of the Halloween franchise, 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch. A near-catatonic patient is brutally killed on Dr Dan Challis’ (Tom Atkins) shift, and the mysterious assailant sets himself ablaze. Desperate to make sense of this, Dan accompanies the murdered man’s daughter to the factory of Conal Cochrane (Dan O’Herlihy), Halloween mask entrepreneur and small-town philanthropist, to investigate. Robots full of lemon curd, drunk doctoring, stolen 'henge', and an advertising jingle that’ll burrow in to your head like a tonne of bugs – join Gali, Devlin and Rewind Movie Podcast debutant Patrick to see if we’re in for a treat, or a trick (like, say, sticky toilet paper, or the Dead Dwarf Gag). If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill. 

“The streets are awash with drugs you can have for unhappiness and pain, and we took them all.” We’re heading to the murky hinterland of Edinburgh with Danny Boyle’s visceral 1996 sophomore feature Trainspotting.Erudite, sallow twenty-something Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) has chosen not to choose life - he’s chosen something else. Heroin. He injects his days away at the den of his dealer, Mother Superior (Peter Mullan), with motormouthed James Bond aficionado Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller), and hard-luck idiot Spud (Ewan Bremner) - much to the dismay of his ball of lager-swilling machismo mate Begbie (Robert Carlyle), and the straight-laced Tommy (Kevin McKIdd). As Renton’s efforts to kick his habit lurch between success and failure, the unsustainable pursuit of the next high draws him, and everyone around him, into an increasingly desperate stew of violence and sickness.A defining totem of the brief, cringeworthily christened Cool Britannia era, which saw filmmakers, writers, artists and musicians benefit from a sense of renewed ambition as the financially straitened 1980s gave way to the optimistic 1990s, it’s reputation persists as a punky hit with a killer soundtrack and an iconic poster that flew out of the doors of Athena’s in regional shopping centres across the country. But is that reputation at odds with the dour, challenging material? Join Gali, Devli, Patrick and Matt as they dive into a massive, pristine convenience with brilliant gold taps, a seat carved from ebony, and a cistern full of Chanel No. 5.If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill. 

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. The LV-RMP series continues to explore the Ridley Scott sequel universe with 2017’s Alien: Covenant.The crew of an intergalactic colonisation vessel is jolted from hypersleep by a catastrophic freak event while it is under the control of the ship’s android, Walter (Michael Fassbender). Reluctant to return to the chambers, overmatched new Captain Oram (Billy Crudup) decides to follow a bizarre human voice signal, mysteriously emanating from a nearby planet - one that seems an even more perfect habitat than their distant destination. There, they find the remnants of the disastrous Prometheus voyage of a decade before, namely Peter Weyland’s personal android David (Fassbender), who has seemingly been using his time to develop his sinister new interests.On the heels of the mixed reaction to his return to the seminal franchise which he spawned, Ridley Scott and team return to the series’ original setup of a naive and increasingly desperate crew faced with the vicious indifference of instinctive horrors they are not equipped to face, albeit intertwined with the grandiose existential questions of his previous outing. Join Gali, Devlin, Patrick and Matt as they tackle what will seemingly be Sir Ridley’s last outing in the universe he created - including flute fingering, sick bay slipping, whiskey sipping and spaceship shower shagging.If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill. 

“Remember what we told you. You keep your eyes open. They're everywhere.” We’re popping in for a quick blood rave with 1998’s Marvel Comics adaptation Blade.Titular daywalker Blade (Wesley Snipes), otherwise known as Eric Brooks, stalks the streets to hunt and kill vampires, driven by a thirst for revenge after his mother was bitten before going into labour, cursing him with a bloodlust that he slakes with a serum administered by his ornery father figure/weapons maker Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). When the undead, bratty upstart Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) starts challenging the established vampire hierarchy and attempting to raise an ancient blood god, Blade teams up with a recently-bitten haematologist to infiltrate the gang and kill Deacon - but the wily bloodsucker has his own plans…Preceding the first big screen X-Men movie by 2 years, and the establishment of the now-all-conquering MCU by a decade, British director Stephen Norrington’s gritty, violent, stylised picture stood in sharp contrast to the increasingly daffy Joel Schumacher Batman movies, turning a tidy profit on a moderate budget and helping lay the groundwork not just for future Marvel adaptations, but also the leather dusters and techno-fuelled kung fu that The Matrix would send stratospheric before the decade’s end. But, does Blade still deliver the goods? Or will Gali, Patrick and Devlin end up ice skating uphill trying to defend it?If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill. 

Final report, the commercial starship Nostromo. We return to our LV-RMP series to talk about the seminal sci-fi horror that started it all: Ridley Scott’s imperious 1979 original ALIEN.Gali, Devlin, Patrick and Matt step in to the laser egg room for the origins of the series, as we meet jaded space truckers Captain Dallas (Tom Skerrit), 3rd Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), and technicians Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) aboard an earthbound mining ship. Diverted by what seems to be a distress beacon, they allow into their house one of the single most terrifying and iconic monsters in cinema history, unleashing a horror that continues to resonate some 4 decades later.We discuss the alchemy behind the film’s creation, to try to unpack how this disparate collection of humans created such a perfect organism, and talk about what the film has meant to us over the years, and how it inspired not just a 40-plus year series but an entire galaxy of imitators and descendents.If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill. 

“Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?” We engage stealth mode with legendary Hong Kong director John Woo’s second Hollywood feature, Broken Arrow.Cocky, veteran US Air Force pilot Major Vic "Deak" Deakins (John Travolta) absconds with a pair of nuclear warheads from an intentionally downed experimental fighter jet, leaving his erstwhile co-pilot and chippy younger mentee Captain Riley Hale (Christian Slater) with the task of pursuing him through the Utah desert with the assistance of the scrappy but overmatched local park ranger Terry Carmichael (Samantha Mathis) to try to prevent a catastrophic international incident.John Travolta continues his post-Pulp Fiction career renaissance with this Graham Yost (Speed)-penned action thriller, a modest hit on release in the jam-packed blockbuster schedule of 1996 that weaves together the era’s headline fixations of political paranoia, post-Cold War nuclear chicanery, and pre-9/11 domestic terrorism, in a Simpson/Bruckheimer-adjacent package of explosions and manly-man posturing. Childhood aficionado Matt discusses the film with occasional appreciator Gali and first-time viewer Devlin, as they discuss the lost art of conference room lighting, a stacked roster of cranky middle-aged character faces, the Great Christian Slater Leading Man Experiment, and much, much more.If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill. 

Checkmate. Come join the Rewind Movie Podcast as we celebrate our Independence Day with Roland Emmerich’s 1996 sci-fi action spectacular.A drunk crop duster pilot with a painful memory of extraterrestrial abduction; an overqualified cable TV repairman and his elderly father; a hot shot Air Force ace, his exotic dancer girlfriend, and her cutesy kid; and a war hero President with faltering approval figures are among the sprawling cast that finally receive a definitive answer to the question, ‘are we alone in the universe?’. The response comes courtesy of on-screen devastation the likes of which audiences had never seen before, as the 90s disaster movie arms race went nuclear and then some.German director Emmerich’s 3rd Hollywood feature tapped emerging megastar Will Smith, quirky character actor-turned-recently-minted summer movie favourite Jeff Goldblum, and versatile leading man Bill Pullman for lead roles, surrounded them with a murderer’s row of familiar supporting faces (including an inexplicably deployed Randy Quaid), and dropped them into a maximalist effects-laden extravaganza that led to extraordinary financial success. But, is it actually…good? Gali, Devlin and Matt tussle with the tentacles, position our pieces, and call our mothers. And our housekeepers. And our lawyers. Actually, forget the lawyers.If you have a film you’d like the gang to tackle, send us an email at rewindmoviepodcast@gmail.com. For introductions, essays, playlists, and the full back catalogue of episodes and specials, find us at rewindmoviecast.com. For specially designed merchandise, movie shirts, posters, and our famous Bingo Trope Totes and a poster based on this week’s episode cover image, head to DevlinDoesDrawing on Teemill.