Unclear and Present Danger

Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz
  • 4.7 (524)
  • TV & FILM
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Unclear and Present Danger Podcast

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and freelance writer John Ganz delve into the world of 90s post-Cold War thrillers with Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast that explores America in an age of transition to lone superpower, at once triumphant and unsure of its role in the world.

  1. SEP 14

    Absolute Power

    In this week's episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Absolute Power, the 1997 conspiracy thriller directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by William Goldman and based off of a David Baldacci novel of the same name. In addition to Eastwood, Absolute Power stars Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert.  In Absolute Power, Eastwood plays Luther Whitney, a master thief who makes the fateful decision to rob billionaire Walter Sullivan, a close friend and ally of the president of the United States. During the burglary, Whitney sees President Alan Richmond assault Sullivan's wife, Christy, with whom he is having an affair. When she fights back, the president's security detail kills her. Sullivan, who witnesses the altercation, escapes with evidence of the killing. When he becomes prime suspect in an investigation led by local police, Whitney devotes himself to exposing the president's misdeed while evading Sullivan's hired assassin — who believes Whitney is responsible — as well as a secret service agent who wants to silence the only witness.

    54 min

  2. AUG 24

    Shadow Conspiracy

    On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Shadow Conspiracy, the 1997 political thriller directed by George P. Cosmatos and starring Charlie Sheen, Linda Hamilton, Donald Sutherland and Sam Waterston. In Shadow Conspiracy, a young White House aide uncovers a plot to assassinate the president, making him a target of the conspirators. What follows is a race to evade the assassin, expose those responsible, and save constitutional government from a shadowy group of deep state operators. If this sounds generic, that’s because it is! The movie feels like it was written by ChatGPT. Despite the total absence of anything original, Jamelle and John do find much to discuss in the film, including the ways in which it is rooted in the anti-political ethos of the 1990s.

    1h 3m

  3. AUG 9

    Mars Attacks!

    On this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched Tim Burton’s 1996 sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks!, starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short Pam Grier, Rod Steiger, Jim Brown, Lukas Haas, Danny DeVito and Natalie Portman. Mars Attacks! was based off of the 1960s-era trading card series by Topps. In the series, Earth is invaded by cruel, hideous Martians who hope to colonize the planet and enslave its population.  In the movie, Earth is invaded by cruel hideous Martians. But they don’t seem to want to colonize the planet as much as engage in wanton destruction for its own sake. To the extent that the film has a plot, it follows several groups of people. There is President James Dale, played by Nicholson, his wife and daughter. There is a young donut shop employee and his family in Nevada. There is an aging boxer turned casino employee, his ex-wife and their children. And there are a pair of talk show hosts. The film shows first contact followed by the Martian war on Earth. Most of the characters are either weak and incompetent, like President Dale and the American military, vain and oblivious, like the various members of the media, or outright rubes, like some of the more ordinary people in the film.  The Martians rampage across the country, killing everyone they see including the president and the first lady. They are eventually stopped when two characters, the young donut shop employee and his grandmother, discover that the yodeling on Slim Whitman’s “Indian Love Call” is enough to cause their heads to explode. They defeat the Martian invasion and are awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their exploits. The taglines for Mars Attacks were “Nice planet. We’ll take it!” and “Yikes! They’ve landed!” Mars Attacks is available for rent or purchase either Amazon or Apple TV.

    1h 5m

  4. JUL 15

    Independence Day

    In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched the 1996 sci-fi action thriller Independence Day, written and directed by Roland Emmerich and starring an ensemble cast of Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Robert Loggia, Randy Quaid, Margaret Colin, Vivica A. Fox and James Rebhorn, among many others. In Independence Day, humanity makes its first contact with an alien race. What follows is one day of destruction, one of despair, and one day where the human race, led by the United States, fights back. Jamelle and John use the film to discuss the triumphalist American optimism of the 1990s as well as the political afterlife of the imagery of the film, which extends into the post-9/11 era.

    1h 9m

  5. JUN 30

    Star Trek: First Contact

    For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched Star Trek: First Contact, the eighth movie in the Star Trek film series and the first film in that series to focus solely on the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. First Contact stars Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner Marina Sartis, Michael Dorm, Alfrie Woodard, Alice Krige and James Cromwell. It was directed by Frakes with a score by Jerry Goldsmith. In First Contact, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of Enterprise races through time to Earth’s past to confront the Borg, a cybernetic hivemind that has gone back to humanity’s moment of first contact with an alien species in order to destroy the Federation and change the future. Picard and his team must fight two battles. On Earth, they must ensure First Contact. On the Enterprise, they must defeat the Borg, who have taken root on the ship.

    1h 23m

  6. JUN 13

    Courage Under Fire

    For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Courage Under Fire, a 1996 war drama directed by Edward Zwick and starring Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, as well as Lou Diamond Phillips, Matt Damon, Michael Moriarty and Bronson Pinchot. In Courage Under Fire, Denzel Washington plays Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling, an army tank commander who accidentally fires on and destroys one of his own tanks during a nighttime battle in the closing days of the Persian Gulf War, killing his best friend in the process. The Army covers up the details and assigns Serling to a desk job, where he is tasked with investigating and determining whether a solider should receive the award for which they were recommended. He is assigned the case of Captain Karen Walden, the commander of a Medevac Huey helicopter sent to rescue the crew of a Black Hawk helicopter. She was killed in the line of duty, saving both the lives of her crew and those of the downed helicopter. The Army, and the White House, wants to give her the Medal of Honor. As Serling interviews the men involved in the incident, he notices inconsistencies in the testimonies of Walden’s crew. Some praise her strongly, others say she was a coward. Still others testify to events that cannot be confirmed. Under pressure from both the White House and his commanding officer to authorize the award — and struggling with PTSD from his experiences on the battlefield — Serling resolves to discover the truth of the matter, even if it costs him his career. The tagline for Courage Under Fire was “In wartime, the first casualty is always truth.”

    1h 14m

  7. MAY 17

    Chain Reaction

    On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1996 science fiction conspiracy action thriller Chain Reaction, directed by Andrew Davis — whose previous UnclearPod films are The Package, Under Siege and The Fugitive — and starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz, Fred Ward, Kevin Dunn and Brian Cox. Chain Reaction revolves around a group of scientists at the University of Chicago who are working to convert hydrogen from water into clean energy. They find their breakthrough when their machinist, Eddie Kasalivich (played by Reeves), discovers the secret — a sound frequency that stabilizes the process. Later that evening, a group of mysterious assailants kill the lead scientist and destroy the laboratory. Kasalivich, who had returned to retrieve his motorcycle after escorting Dr. Lily Sinclair (Weisz) home, is the only witness. When the FBI arrives to investigate, they zero in on Kasalivich and Sinclair as their chief suspects, goaded along by the mysterious presence of advanced technology in Kasalivich’s apartment and evidence of espionage in Sinclair’s. With the help of Paul Shannon, the leader of the Chicago project, they escape the clutches of law enforcement only to find themselves fleeing the armed agents of a secretive industrial group. As Kasalivich and Sinclair race against time to uncover the mystery of the explosion, and clear their names of wrongdoing, they realize that their scientific breakthrough is a threat to some very powerful people, and that their friends aren’t who they seem to be. You can find Chain Reaction to watch on demand on HBO Max and also to rent or buy on Amazon and Apple TV. We’ll see you next in two weeks when an episode on Courage Under Fire, the 1996 legal drama directed by Edward Zwick and starring Denzel Washington, Meg Ryan, Lou Diamond Phillips and Matt Damon.

    1h 5m

  8. MAY 4

    A Time to Kill

    On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “A Time to Kill,” Joel Schumacher’s 1996 adaptation of a 1989 John Grisham novel by the same name. Starring Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey, with supporting performances from Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt, Charles S. Dutton, Ashley Judd, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris Cooper, “A Time to Kill” concerns the trial of Carl Lee Hailey, a black man on trial for capital murder after killing the two men who assaulted his 10-year-old daughter. When Jake Brigance, a white lawyer who previously defended Hailey’s brother, takes the job to keep Carl Lee out of the execution’s chamber, the small Mississippi town of Canton, where the film takes place, is plunged into chaos. Brigance and his team must navigate national attention, a skilled and ambitious prosecutor, and a revitalized Ku Klux Klan, willing, able and eager to derail the trail and stop Brigance by any means necessary. All the while, Brigance must handle the strain on his family and his marriage. The official tagline for “A Time to Kill” was: “A lawyer and his assistant fighting to save a father on trial for murder. A time to question what they believe. A time to doubt what they trust. And no time for mistakes.” You can find “A Time to Kill” to rent or buy on demand at iTunes and Amazon. For our next episode, we’re watching “Chain Reaction,” a science-fiction thriller directed by Andrew Davis and starring Morgan Freeman and Keanu Reeves.

    1h 6m
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4.7
out of 5
524 Ratings

About

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and freelance writer John Ganz delve into the world of 90s post-Cold War thrillers with Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast that explores America in an age of transition to lone superpower, at once triumphant and unsure of its role in the world.

Information

  • Creator
    Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2024
  • Episodes
    77
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Jamelle Bouie & John Ganz
  • Show Website
    Unclear and Present Danger

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