Largely considered the best (or one of the best) WWII movies ever made, Saving Private Ryan showed that Spielberg could make just about any kind of movie and do it masterfully. We talk about how he pulled it off, his collaboration with Tom Hanks, the themes of war movies, that…
If you are like me, you likely grew up watching Disney Animated Classics! There are a ton of great ones from early films like Snow White and Pinocchio to more recent additions like Moana and Encanto. In this movie draft, we battle it out for our favorite Disney classics to…
This is a rerun of a movie draft we did of films in the Top 100 of all-time worldwide box office earnings back in Episode 3. It makes for an interesting draft because the list is surprisingly bereft of really incredible movies with a few exceptions. You are mostly choosing…
When December rolls around, it is time to start watching Christmas movies! It has been a joy to grow my little family with our own little Christmas traditions, and movies are a big part of that. So, this week, continuing my family Chritsmas movie favorites series, I bring on my…
Growing up, watching Christmas movies was always a part of our family tradition. This week, I am joined by my mom and sister to hear to hear about their favorite Christmas movies. They also share the favorites of my dad and brother-in-law who were not able to come on. I…
What is better at Christmas time than cozying up with your family for a great Christmas movie?! While we can’t really do that on a podcast, I thought I would spend the next few weeks with my family hearing about their favorite Christmas movies. This week, I am joined by…
Happy Thanksgiving! This week, we are playing a rerun of the movie draft we held all the way back on episode 2 of the show with Jacob Phillips: the Movie Sequels Draft. This was a really fun draft! I hope you enjoy revisiting it or hearing it for the first…
A new era of Spielberg’s career was launched when he partnered with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to start a brand new studio from scratch: DreamWorks SKG. I talk through the history of this endeavor and what it means for Spielberg’s career. I also do a bonus review of the…
Spielberg’s Amistad, the telling of a true historical event in which enslaved Africans took over their slave ship and were then captured and put on trial to determine their freedom, has some things going for it. It looks great, the acting is really good (phenomenal, in fact, for Djimon Hounsou…
Sometimes critics or the general public get a movie wrong! This week, we let you know which movies deserve reconsideration or a revisit with our Top 5 Underrated Movies. These are movies that were critical flops or just considered not very good by the general public but that we thought…
A few years after the most successful year of his entire career, Spielberg released what he called his first true sequel in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Our discussion revolves around the fun elements of this film and it’s development as well as some of the major problems with its…
Joe George is a writer for several publications including Den of Geek and Think Christian, but he also wrote a book exploring superhero movies through a theological lens: The Superpowers and the Glory. This week we discuss his process for writing about pop-culture, his interest in superheroes and what he…
Schindler’s List is almost undeniably Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, the pinnacle of his career, and releasing just 6 months after the record breaking Jurassic Park. However, it didn’t come without its struggles on an emotionally charged set or its controversy over its depiction of the Holocaust. We talk about all of…
Sometimes science goes all wrong, and sometimes that happens in movies! This week we do a draft of our favorite movies where some sort of scientific endeavor goes all wrong, whether technological, biological, or sometimes both like in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park which inspired this draft. We had a great time…
In 1993, Steven Spielberg once again awed audiences by giving them something they had never seen so real before on the big screen: dinosaurs. With Jurassic Park, he started what would turn out to be one of the greatest movie years for a director ever, started a technological revolution in…
We follow up our discussion of Spielberg’s Hook with a semi-related Disney Villains Draft! Disney fan Colby Ewert joins me to go back and forth picking our favorite villains from Disney and Pixar films. We compiled some great lists along with some great discussion of these villains and what makes…
With Hook, Spielberg was beginning a new decade of filmmaking, but this adventure movie that acts as a twist on a classic tale really marks the end of a particular phase in his career. This film was a huge deal at the time, not only because of the well known…
Which movie decades are the best? We are doing a rerun of our very first movie draft from our first episode this week! In this first movie draft, we took turns taking movie decades, trying to amass the best group of decades. This endeavor made for some good discussion, and…
For this intermission in our Spielberg series, we take a look back at his career thus far, analyzing his career of the 1970s and 1980s overall. Then we discuss the transition point Spielberg is in moving out of the 80s and into the 90s and do a bit of a…
The fall movie season is upon us! In this episode, I do a recap of great films I have seen since the ‘Best of the Year So Far’ episode. Then, I look forward to the upcoming slate of fall movies, talk about the ones I am most excited about, and…
Spielberg ended his run of 80s movies with the romance-drama-comedy-fantasy Always. If that sounds like a confusing mish-mash of genres, it’s because it kind of is. While the movie is tonally confusing and has a plot that is strangely questionable at best, it is still beautifully shot with a really…
It is movie draft time! This week we celebrate the completion of the original Indiana Jones trilogy on the show by doing a draft of movie trilogies! Guest Christiaan Funkhouser and I take turns choosing 7 of our favorite film trilogies, and you get to decide who ended up with…
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, seemingly the last of a trilogy of adventure collaborations between Steven Spielberg and George Lucas at the time, came in the middle of a bit of a career shift for Spielberg. You can see a bit of that infused into the movie with more…
Christian Bale had his big debut for most people in Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, which we discussed last week. This week, we accompany that discussion with a movie draft of Christian Bale performances. We take turns choosing our favorite performances from Bale, and discuss his acting career along the…