The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

Ken, Thomas, and Ryan
  • 5.0 (14)
  • Film Reviews
  • Updated Weekly

Long-running film podcast featuring hosts Ken, Ryan and Thomas and numerous guests talking filmographies, oddities, classics and side hustles. Through a thousand seasons they have talked about nearly every movie ever made (verified by PodStats Inc). Currently embroiled in a scandalous international lawsuit with an Oscar-winning director over who owns the phrase "Temporal Pincer Movement."

  1. HACKS: RERUN SPECIAL: PETER YATES, FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE FROM S14

    2h ago

    HACKS: RERUN SPECIAL: PETER YATES, FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE FROM S14

    Send us Fan Mail As prefunk to next week's first Peter Yates episode, BULLITT, for his HACKS 4X4, we re-present our first Yates film, covered last year, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE. Coyle is so good and co-host Ken's befuddlement so severe that Yates also directed KRULL is what eventually led to this season of HACKS. Below is the sadly prescient original show notes for our Coyle episode written by show note genius, Thomas: The second 1x1 feature rounding out Season 14 and, chosen by Jack, the film is THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973). Directed by Peter Yates, whose career TGTPTU is unlikely to cover in a future 4x4 despite having Krull and Bullitt in his credits, TFOEC is an adaptation of George V. Higgins’ inaugural novel and notable as a unromanticized depiction of crime in artistic response to The Godfather, the Puzo book and Coppola film each preceding, respectively, the book and movie versions of TFOEC by one year.  Higgins would take issue with the book as his debut novel. The former deputy assistant attorney general claimed to have written and burned 14 novels over 17 years prior to TFOEC and would go on to author over 30 books, both fiction and nonfiction before his fatal heart attack in 1999, but none with the impact of his first. As seasonal guest host Jack points out, nearly all the dialogue in the film is as it is on the page, and the pages are dripping with dialogue that creates the setting and action for this ironic story of “friends” who double-cross and live less than glamorous lives as Irish mobsters and criminals in Boston.  Yates populates the film with faces, faces that we don’t see much anymore, distinct faces and every one telling a story, from the titular Coyle plated by Robert Mitchum who earlier in this life reluctantly left the assembly line to be an actor to actor Alex Rocco who starred as Moe Greene in The Godfather and helped Mitchum meet some of his old criminal friends whom Rocco had to leave behind after he (the actor Alex Rocco) was held for questioning in relation to the murder that kicked off the Boston Irish Gang War of the 1960s to James Tolkan before he’d lost his hair a decade prior to portraying Principal Strickland in the Back to the Future movies and Detective Hugh Lubic in the Cannon Films classic Masters of the Universe.  For this episode, everyone did research: Jack and Thomas pair off for book report; Ryan covers the career of Mitchum; and Ken covers Yates and laments how now Hollywood lacks hacks as well as provides a new shaggy dog with The Pals of Charlie Brown. Make sure to wipe your prints clean on this one before listening with a friend. NEXT WEEK: Peter Yates, HACK, Episode #1: BULLITT.  THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Buzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/ Letterboxd (follow us!):  Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    1h 11m
  2. HACKS: RON HOWARD #4 THE DA VINCI CODE

    Jun 5

    HACKS: RON HOWARD #4 THE DA VINCI CODE

    Send us Fan Mail Season 17 of TGTPTU calls a wrap on its third of four directors in its 4x4 this week with Ron Howard’s THE DA VINCI CODE (2006).    Starring Tom Hanks, father of musician and male model Chet Hanks but also known for leading roles in such earlier Howard films not covered on this podcast as Splash (1984) and Apollo 13 (1995), with a grotesque haircut as supersleuth symbiologist Robert Langdon from Dan Brown’s 2003 best-selling page-turner of the same name, the movie is a bunch of nonsense that got some Catholics upset for suggesting Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the disputed son of a disputed desert deity, had children, likely through consensual intercourse unlike the legend of his siring. Howard’s The Da Vinci Code also has great French actors used poorly in this flick mostly set in France and at least one Jellicle cat, one Sony Spiderman villain, and one Avenger (MCU, not BBC) actor of British lineage to help out the American Langdon in his quest for an ultimate truth that could rock the world to its core assuming it’s not flat (see Revelation 7:1 and Isaiah 11:12, ya heathens).    Holy host Ryan goes above and beyond in his research for this ep; the son Jack passes the season’s assignment; the father Ken is unimpressed by the chase scenes; and Doubting Thomas in real time processes that the female lead is the same actress as the titular Amélie (2001).   If you like anagrams and unstimulating action sequences, this might be the movie for you.     Skcus eivom siht.    P.S. You know that I am Opus Dei.   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    1h 6m
  3. HACKS: RON HOWARD #3 COCOON

    May 29

    HACKS: RON HOWARD #3 COCOON

    Send us Fan Mail TGTPTU’s olds take a break from handing out shiny nickels and Werther’s Originals warm from their pockets and yelling at clouds to join Gen Z cohosts Thomas and Jack for the latter’s third pick from Ron Howard, the child star turned hack director’s big studio, Industrial Light & Magic, four-quadrant blockbuster COCOON (1985).    Chosen due to nightmares it’d given to, and an insane plot retelling by, Jack’s friend, this first-time watch for him is remembered fondly as a family outing and rewatch by Gen X cohosts Ken and Ryan. That friend’s plot summary of extraterrestrials passing in human skinsuits abducting retirement home residents after seducing them with youthful lives of breakdancing and sexual congress does sound terrifying, but the film filters much of this through an all-star cast of Golden Age Hollywood actors (including this film’s Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actor Don Ameche and his four-out-of-four-star gams) and the youthful innocence of child actor Barret Oliver from The NeverEnding Story (1984) and the titular Daryl in D.A.R.Y.L. (1985). The flick also has a mid-twenties Steve Guttenberg in short shorts. Who likes the Gute in short shorts? We like the Gute in short shorts.   Exclusive to listeners of this episode, Ryan reveals the location of Atlantis; Thomas considers sex as an and/or with elderly person(s); Jack reveals his childhood-trauma-by-proxy; and Ken is unimpressed by the chase scenes but very into Gwen Verdon’s legs. Meanwhile, John Ritter’s testicle enters the chat.    This episode is, to borrow a phrase, “blue steel; a cat couldn’t scratch it.”   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    59 min
  4. HACKS: RON HOWARD #2 HILLBILLY ELEGY

    May 22

    HACKS: RON HOWARD #2 HILLBILLY ELEGY

    Send us Fan Mail TGTPTU’s good ol’ boys continue their binge with another director-hack four-pack, this time with that pilsner of directors, Richie Cunningham himself (Ron Howard) as we funnel a second watery intoxicant down our gullets and try not to puke with HILLBILLY ELEGY (2020).      Labeled a drama/comedy, this Netflix original is light on the latter, despite the normally exceptional screenwriter Vanessa Taylor being credited with the dramatization/adaptation of the 2016 autobiographical bestseller by the couch-copulating and at the time relatively unknown, already Peter Thiel-influenced, yet-to-be politician J. D. Vance. And also despite being lensed by pod-fav Maryse Alberti both initially and last discussed during Season 11’s The Wrestler when Aronofsky took a break from Libatique as cinematographer (S11, E2, Airdate 2/17/24).     Set primarily in two timelines (though no promises that a flashback did not have its own flashback or flashforward within), in one storyline the middle-school-aged J. D. spends most of his time in Ohio (FYI: Ohio is not part of Appalachia) with his manic mother before her mother (his grandmother) takes him as her charge and forces him to get some learning. The second timeline occurs over a few days as college-aged J. D. is a fish out of water at fancy, multi-fork dinner functions and must lean on his fiancée and an unlimited minutes cell phone plan to navigate the high society waters of Yale Law School (where she also attends). These two timelines thematically converge when J. D. must return to his Ohioan roots to confront his mother’s drug addiction, maxing out credit cards for gasoline and treatment, and teaching us a lesson that need-based college handouts and credit card debt are terrible things for other poor folks but if you’re the protagonist of a Ron Howard, triple Golden Raspberry nominated film, they’re what you need to be a best-selling writer and presidential lapdog.    THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    56 min
  5. HACKS: RON HOWARD #1 GRAND THEFT AUTO

    May 15

    HACKS: RON HOWARD #1 GRAND THEFT AUTO

    Send us Fan Mail Season 17’s halfway to the finish line, and the TGTPTU boys are back from break revving their engines, ready for the next four in their “hack” director line-up. Jack’s pick coming in third is Ron Howard, starting with his first film in the big chair, the “smash-‘em-up” smash success (for a Roger Corman feature) GRAND THEFT AUTO (1977).  Howard’s only feature to co-write or to co-star in as director, the then-Happy Days star cut his teeth on GTA (no relation to the videogame) coming off the success as leading man-boy in the preceding Corman car chase flick Eat My Dust (1976). As part of Howard’s deal with Corman, the success of EMD put the boy who once played Opie Taylor in TV’s The Andy Griffith’s Show in charge of first and second units, stunt coordinators, helicopters, and his kin/fellow actors brother Clint Howard and father Rance Howard—all this on the day after Ron’s 23rd birthday.  GTA’s plot follows young elopers played by Howard and Nacy Morgan (who might be best known as John Ritter’s first wife), who’ve stolen Morgan’s father’s Rolls-Royce to avoid the pressure of her pseudo-arranged marriage to a rich dweeb. This theft leads Morgan’s father, a prominent citizen about to run for major office, to have his security detail retrieve his car (and daughter). Morgan’s jilted dweeb upon learning he’s not to be betrothed assumes she’s been kidnapped and calls a local radio station to put a bounty on her safe return before stealing a car to give chase himself, causing his wealthy mother to call the same station to offer a separate bounty for her son’s safe return. From there, cars go crash, clang, boom, and pow.    Start peeling off your lead paint and start snacking on its sweet goodness to revel in this 70’s film concept of comedy during what the hosts generally agree is a second-screener.    This ep, Ryan turns his head cold to his advantage as a radio announcer; Jack reveals this and Solo (2018) are the only Howard movies he’s seen prior; and Thomas and Ken recommend (re)listening to the Any Which Way You Can episode and dunk hard on regular Howard collaborating producer Brian Grazer’s hair.  CORRECTION: Jonathan Demme’s film for Roger Corman wasn’t Handle with Care (nor was it Woody Allen’s Radio Days) but Caged Heat (followed by Crazy Momma) when Demme was giving Howard some Corman-related advice.    THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    53 min
  6. HACKS: EDWARD DMYTRYK #4 WARLOCK

    May 1

    HACKS: EDWARD DMYTRYK #4 WARLOCK

    Send us Fan Mail Season 17’s second four from a hack director concludes this week with the final film by Edward Dmytryk under discussion, a color saddles-and-stirrups flick WARLOCK (1959).    Arguably a better title of ≪L'Homme aux colts d'or≫ in its French-language release, Warlock as a two-hander Western covers the entry into the unincorporated community of Warlock by Henry Fonda’s Clay Blaisedell, a legendary gunslinger who owns a pair of golden six-shooters and, separately, the evolution of Richard Widmark’s Johnny Gannon from reluctant outlaw cowpuncher to sheriff of Warlock whose prominent citizens earlier lacking a sheriff had contracted Blaisedell to clean up. Homoerotic tensions arise between Blaisedell and Anthony Quinn’s Tom Morgan when Blaisedell decides to pursue romance with a significantly younger woman in lieu of their money-making vigilante partnering ways. Sheriff Gannon’s character also finds a love interest as the movie builds toward > its final act, a post-shootout shootout between Blaisedell and Gannon with no Morgan to watch the former’s back. And no plot summary would be complete without mention of Star Trek TOS’s very own DeForest Kelley as “Curley” Burne, a member of Gannon’s former gang with some magnetism remaining in the character’s moral compass.   This week, Thomas expands on a list of movies whose misleading titles lead to disappointment; Ken expresses he’s not fonda Fonda in this film; and Ryan soft-shoes the homoerotic tension.    We’re taking a week off before shifting gears and entering the demolition derby that will be our next four in the 4x4 starting with Ron Howard’s debut film Grand Theft Auto.    THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    54 min
  7. HACKS: EDWARD DMYTRYK #3 THE CAINE MUTINY

    Apr 24

    HACKS: EDWARD DMYTRYK #3 THE CAINE MUTINY

    Send us Fan Mail It’s calm seas and second helpings of strawberries this week as the TGTPTU boys cover their third of four curated Edward Dmytryk films, the multiple Oscar-nominated picture THE CAINE MUTINY (1954).   Saving its then “issues” producer (and subsequent to this movie an issues director) Stanley Kramer’s bacon, Dmytryk delivered a bona fide hit picture adapting the already popular book by Herman Wouk about a fictional mutiny during WWII among American seaman upon the titular Caine. Deviating from the Broadway courtroom play starring Henry Fonda (who’ll show up in next week’s Dmytryk film), the movie hews closer to the novel depicting on screen and in glorious Technicolor events aboard the ship leading to the mutiny, leaving the theatrical adaptation’s courtroom drama for the third act. The movie would also add Yosemite National Park as a romantic getaway between its Ivy League, very mid, blonde protagonist and POV character Ensign Willie Keith played by a now relatively unknown Robert Francis who died tragically at age 25 after a plane crash and his character’s fiancée May Wynn played by May Wynn who changed her stage name to that of her character on the recommendation of Kramer. And for more on the plot, there’s IMDB, Wikipedia, and further resources on the World Wide Web if you don’t have a great-grandpa around to ask.    The film would have seven Academy Awards nominations and no wins, with Bogart losing out to Brando (and Kramer to Spiegel) for On the Waterfront.      This episode Ken and his metaphor get sweaty towards the ep’s end; Ryan reveals the thuggish life of Joan Didion; and Gen Z’ers Jack and Thomas settle the TGTPTU style guide dispute over how to pronounce “gif.”    And now for an important announcement: Despite what your lying ears have heard, there has never been a recorded mutiny on TGTPTU. The truths of each episode lie not in their incidents, but in the way these three hosts in the battle for the Pacific Northwest meet the crisis of their lives. Now sound the Star Trek Original Series whistle, we’re coming onboard.    THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    1h 9m
  8. HACKS: EDWARD DMYTRYK #2 MIRAGE

    Apr 17

    HACKS: EDWARD DMYTRYK #2 MIRAGE

    Send us Fan Mail Mirage Season 17’s Hacks continues with MIRAGE (1965), the latest selection from Edward Dmytryk’s filmography curated by cohost Ryan phoning in from Arizona for his second of four flicks picked in this season’s 4x4. And another black-and-white noirish mystery loosely adapting a novel.    Dmytryk’s reworking of the uncredited print material (the 1952 novel Fallen Angel) created a film that exploits the conventions of the genre to obscure the film’s conceit and twist reveal, which is > that the protagonist David Stillwell played by Gregory Peck has amnesia of the non-explosive kind (clarification for Matt Groening fans, yes, we see you Portland, Oregon whose citizens named their streets after Simpsons characters; Vancouver, WA, putting you on blast: when are you going to get onboard and do the same for your streets using Futurama characters?) and where were we? This amnesia seems to set yours falsely back two years, or was it two days, like this protagonist Stillwell who thinks he’s a cost accountant and meets Sheela played by Diane Baker on a stairwell that descends more stories than the building physically has. But with our introduction in media res to Stillwell proverbially and literally in the dark after power loss at the high rise that leads to this stairwell descent, the audience is set up for misdirection. Add in what seem cutaway scenes that might actually be flashbacks and vice versa, and the art of editing and our movie literacy actually impedes, as intended, our understanding the events of the film. Yet with the help of a scene-stealing Walter Matthau as novice private eye Ted Caselle and later a psychologist and throughout with Kevin McCarthy who plays Stillwell’s coworker Josephson in the employ of mysterious and powerful character The Major, Stillwell is able to piece together the puzzle of his missing and nonchronological memories. Using his cunning intelligence during the standoff at the film’s climax, Stillwell forces Josephson to make a moral decision, and the stakes couldn’t be higher: The Major wants to make nuclear war clean, i.e., make the use of atomic weapons feasible for the U.S. military, and Stillwell—not a cost account—has the equations to make it so. >      Non-spoiling: The editing in this film is amazeballs. And its jazz-inspired score is by Quincy Jones.    This week, experience relative deprivation as Peck’s car purchase for his screenwriter has Ken disappointed in Spielberg’s gifting as discussed back in Season 6; Ryan covers the second half of Dmytryk’s life and career during and post-HUAC; Jack takes another bye week; and Thomas dives back into his recent 70’s disaster film watches to provide unrelated information. Also, Ken has a surprise that might presage a pattern for hosts and films this 4x4 season.  To borrow from the Futurama episode “Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television”:    “When I grow up, I’m gonna have so much amnesia!” “Me too. I mean, I have it now, but I forgot.”     This episode is dedicated to The Greater Good. May your best days be before you still.    Now where was I? Seems like I was just on SE Fry St where it intersects with Bender Blvd.   THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I. Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0 Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g Letterboxd (follow us!): Podcast: goodpodugly Ken: Ken Koral Ryan: Ryan Tobias

    58 min
See All (234)

5
out of 5
14 Ratings

About

Long-running film podcast featuring hosts Ken, Ryan and Thomas and numerous guests talking filmographies, oddities, classics and side hustles. Through a thousand seasons they have talked about nearly every movie ever made (verified by PodStats Inc). Currently embroiled in a scandalous international lawsuit with an Oscar-winning director over who owns the phrase "Temporal Pincer Movement."

Information

  • Creator
    Ken, Thomas, and Ryan
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    234
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Good, The Pod and The Ugly
  • Show Website
    The Good, The Pod and The Ugly