Movie HighLow

Movie HighLow
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Movie HighLow is a film podcast about the best—and worst—that cinema has to offer. Each episode, we go either HIGH or LOW and break down exactly what works, what doesn’t, and what went completely off the rails. Some movies are great. Some are terrible. Some are both. From iconic classics to fascinating disasters, we’re here to figure out why. Film analysis • Movie breakdowns • Movie reviews • High vs Low • Film podcast

  1. 1d ago

    HOOK (1991) | Spielberg at Sentimentality Overload (Low)

    On this week's Movie HighLow, we went Low on Hook, but this is one of those Lows that comes with a lot of affection. We love so much of this movie. We love Robin Williams as Peter Banning slowly finding his way back to Peter Pan. We love Dustin Hoffman chewing through every syllable as Captain Hook. We love Rufio, Smee, the Lost Boys, the practical Neverland sets, the John Williams score, and the fact that this movie has lived rent-free in the heads of an entire generation. The problem is that Hook (1991) is not lacking magic. It has too much of it. This is Steven Spielberg turned all the way up: big feelings, big music, big sets, big reaction shots, big sentimental buttons on top of other sentimental buttons. The heart of the movie works. Sometimes it works beautifully. But then Spielberg keeps underlining it, circling it, adding one more speech, one more tear, one more “Mommy,” one more floating old man, until the movie starts giving itself a toothache. Main Discussion In this episode, we revisit Hook, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1991, as a movie that feels almost impossible to judge cleanly. It is technically a Low, but it is also a movie with images, performances, and emotional beats that still absolutely work. The big argument is that Hook could have been close to a perfect kids’ adventure movie if someone had been willing to trim the fat. The setup is strong: Peter Banning, played by Robin Williams, is a work-obsessed corporate lawyer who has forgotten that he was once Peter Pan. He misses his son Jack’s baseball game, takes business calls during his daughter Maggie’s play, and treats family time like an interruption. When Captain Hook kidnaps his children and drags him back to Neverland, Peter has to rediscover imagination, play, and the part of himself he abandoned when he grew up. That idea is great. It is simple, emotional, and very Spielberg. The movie works best when it connects Peter becoming Pan again with Peter becoming a better father. The scene where Moira, played by Caroline Goodall, tells Peter that his children still want to play with him but will not want that forever is one of the best scenes in the film. Watching it as a parent makes it hit even harder. It is not just a speech about “work less, love your kids more.” It is about how quickly childhood disappears while adults are busy convincing themselves that everything else is urgent. We also spend a lot of time on the things Hook gets absolutely right. Rufio, played by Dante Basco, is the biggest High. He was created for this movie, but he feels instantly iconic: the hair, the chant, the rivalry with Peter, the moment he kneels and gives the sword back. He makes complete sense as the teenager the Lost Boys would rally around after Pan disappeared. His death still hits, maybe too hard, but the character himself is one of the movie’s great inventions. Bob Hoskins as Smee is another huge High. Every time he shows up, the movie gets funnier. He and Hoffman have a perfect rhythm together, and Hoffman’s Captain Hook might be the definitive live-action version of the character for a lot of people who grew up with this movie. He is theatrical, pathetic, vain, dangerous, funny, and totally obsessed with the rematch he has been waiting decades to get. The Lost Boys scenes are where Hook feels most alive. Their practical sets, basketball courts, skate ramps, ragtag costumes, and late ’80s / early ’90s energy give Neverland a tactile quality that would probably be flattened into green-screen sludge today. We talk about how the sets look like sets, but in a way that works. Neverland feels like a giant playground built out of memory, fantasy, and production design money. And then there are the three scenes we think are almost perfect. The Moira speech. The “Oh, there you are, Peter” scene, where Pockets stretches Peter’s face until he sees the boy underneath. And the imaginary dinner scene, where Peter finally learns to play again and the empty plates fill with food. That dinner scene is the whole movie in miniature: funny, emotional, imaginative, and completely clear. Peter gets it. The Lost Boys get it. We get it. Then Spielberg adds more. Key Debates & Takeaways The biggest Low in the episode is not one performance or one scene. It is the runtime and the sentimentality overload. Hook is nearly two and a half hours long, and it should not be anywhere near that. The cell phone quick draw scene, the mermaids, the extended Hook suicide bit, Maggie’s song, the oversized Tinkerbell romance scene, the overexplained happy thought flashback, these are the moments where the movie starts putting a hat on a hat. We also get into the strange obsession with “Mommy” in the second half. Maggie keeps invoking her mother, Hook dies asking for his mommy, and the ending keeps pushing the mother imagery until it starts feeling bizarrely overdone. The emotional idea makes sense, but the repetition gets weird. The Rufio death is another complicated debate. It is effective, and it devastated us as kids, but tonally it sits in the middle of a goofy battle where pirates are being defeated by eggs, marbles, and Lost Boy nonsense. A kid gets stabbed in the chest, says he wishes he had a dad like Peter, and then the movie moves on almost immediately. That tonal whiplash is part of why the ending feels so messy. Still, the final verdict is not that Hook is bad in a boring way. It is a movie full of great pieces that needed more discipline. The things that work work so well that they have lasted for decades. The problem is that Spielberg keeps adding sugar after the cake is already sweet enough. Topics Discussed Hook 1991 review Steven Spielberg’s Hook Robin Williams as Peter Pan Robin Williams as Peter Banning Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell Bob Hoskins as Smee Dante Basco as Rufio Maggie Smith as Wendy Darling Hook as a Low episode Why Hook still works for ’90s kids Hook runtime and sentimentality problems “Oh, there you are, Peter” scene Hook imaginary dinner scene Rufio death scene Lost Boys in Hook John Williams Hook score Hook mermaid scene Tinkerbell human-size scene “To live would be an awfully big adventure” 🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movie-highlow/id1494972813 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5F6GMoqeJcahbZtk592a9a 📲 Follow Movie HighLow: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moviehighlow

    36 min

  2. Jul 3

    JAWS (1975) | Less Is More (High)

    We went High on Jaws, because of course we did. But the reason Jaws (1975) still works is not just “the shark is scary.” The shark is barely in the first half of the movie. What makes Steven Spielberg’s Jaws an American classic is restraint: character, geography, patience, silence, dread, and the confidence to let the audience imagine more than the movie actually shows. That is the whole argument of this episode. Jaws became the modern blockbuster, but what modern blockbusters often forget is that this movie is not great because it is big. It is great because it knows exactly when to be small. The broken shark did not ruin the movie. It saved it. Spielberg had to withhold the monster, shoot from its point of view, lean on John Williams’ score, and build suspense out of what we cannot see. Limitation forced creativity, and the result is one of the most perfectly constructed thrillers ever made. Main Discussion In this episode, we revisit Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1975, as the movie that changed summer movies forever while also teaching a lesson Hollywood mostly misunderstood. It stars Roy Scheider as Police Chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as Quint, Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, and Murray Hamilton as Mayor Larry Vaughn. Yes, it is a shark movie. But more importantly, it is a movie about a town, a family, a local economy, fear, denial, responsibility, and three men who all understand the shark differently. We start with the thing everyone knows: the John Williams Jaws theme. There is no way to talk about this movie without talking about those two notes. But what we focus on is how simple the theme is, and why that simplicity matters. The shark is not a complicated villain. It swims. It eats. It keeps coming. The music becomes the shark’s identity long before we actually see the creature. It is not overworked or overexplained. It is primal, repetitive, and inevitable. That simplicity carries into Spielberg’s direction. We talk a lot about Jaws as a “less is more” movie, especially compared to the kind of overstuffed spectacle that followed in its wake. Spielberg does not show the shark too early. He builds Amity Island first: the beach, the politics, the holiday weekend, the local business panic, the normal rhythms of a community that does not want to believe something monstrous is in the water. That is why Chief Brody works so well as the center of the movie. He is not a superhero. He is a nervous police chief afraid of the water, trying to do the right thing while everyone around him tells him not to overreact. We get into how Brody knows, almost immediately, that something is wrong after Chrissie’s death. He wants to close the beaches. The mayor stops him. And when Alex Kintner is killed, the guilt lands on Brody in a way that feels deeply human. One of our favorite scenes in the whole movie is not a shark attack. It is Brody sitting at the kitchen table after Mrs. Kintner slaps him, completely wrecked, while his young son Sean imitates him. Brody starts making faces back at him, then asks for a kiss “because I need it.” That moment is why Jaws is not just a monster movie. It is grounded in family, shame, fear, and love. We also dig into Matt Hooper, who arrives as science, money, expertise, and impatience with small-town nonsense. Hooper is arrogant, but he is right. He validates what Brody already knows. When he examines Chrissie’s remains, the whole scene plays on his face, because his reaction tells us everything we need to know. Then there is Quint, one of the greatest character introductions in movie history. Before he even speaks, his nails on the chalkboard cut through the chaos of the town meeting. Robert Shaw makes Quint feel like a man carved out of salt, trauma, and stubbornness. He is not just hunting a shark. He is hunting something that has been chasing him since the USS Indianapolis. The movie’s second half is where we really light up. Once the Orca leaves Amity, Jaws basically restarts as a new movie. Everything before that is the town: beaches, politics, denial, capitalism, community fear. Everything after that is Brody, Hooper, and Quint on a boat, trapped with each other and with the thing they have been circling the whole time. Brody is responsibility. Hooper is science. Quint is trauma. The shark tests all three. Key Debates & Takeaways The biggest High of the episode might be the USS Indianapolis monologue. In a movie famous for shark attacks, the best scene is a man sitting at a table telling a story. That says everything about how good Jaws is. The scene works because of Robert Shaw’s delivery, Richard Dreyfuss’s reaction, and the way it suddenly reframes Quint. His line about never putting on a life jacket again is horrifying because it tells us that, for him, drowning would be better than facing sharks again. We also talk about the ending and why it is so satisfying. Quint is gone. Hooper appears to be gone. Brody is alone on a sinking boat, facing the water and the shark he has feared the entire movie. When he blows it up, it is not just spectacle. It is character payoff. The guy who wanted to close the beaches from the beginning has to solve the problem himself. Our one Low is not really inside Jaws. It is what came after it. Jaws helped create the modern blockbuster, but Hollywood often learned the wrong lesson. The lesson should have been restraint, character, geography, suspense, and emotion. Too often, the lesson became: big concept, summer release, massive marketing, keep making sequels until nothing is left. The tragedy is that one of the most elegant popular films ever made became the template for a lot of much less elegant business decisions. Topics Discussed Jaws 1975 review Steven Spielberg’s Jaws Roy Scheider as Chief Brody Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper Robert Shaw as Quint Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody Mayor Vaughn and the Amity beaches John Williams’ Jaws score The two-note Jaws theme Why the shark barely appears in Jaws The broken shark and Spielberg’s restraint Chrissie Watkins opening attack Alex Kintner shark attack scene Brody’s fear of water “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” Brody, Hooper and Quint on the Orca USS Indianapolis monologue Quint’s death in Jaws Jaws ending explained How Jaws created the modern blockbuster

    35 min

  3. Jun 26

    SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993) | Never Deserved The Hate (Low)

    On this week's Movie HighLow, we went Low on Super Mario Bros., but with a pretty major asterisk: this movie never deserved the hate it got. We won't argue that Super Mario Bros. (1993) is a great adaptation, or that it cleanly captures the spirit of the Nintendo games, or that the story makes sense in any normal way. It is messy, compromised, weird, overdesigned, and occasionally completely insane. But that is also what makes it so much fun to watch.  In 1993, Mario did not really have a movie-ready story. He had a brother, a princess, a turtle monster, coins, pipes, mushrooms, Goombas, and a lot of jumping. So directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton had to invent a live-action movie from a video game that was basically pure iconography. What they invented is bonkers, but it is also far more creative than people give it credit for. Main Discussion In this episode, we revisit Super Mario Bros., starring Bob Hoskins as Mario Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi Mario, Samantha Mathis as Princess Daisy, and Dennis Hopper as King Koopa. The movie was a box office disaster, got hammered by critics, and became the go-to example for why live-action video game movies were supposedly doomed. But watching it now, the story is a lot more complicated than that. The first big argument we make is that the usual complaint against this movie, that it is too different from the games, does not totally hold up. Different from what, exactly? By 1993, Super Mario Bros. was a beloved franchise, but it was not some dense cinematic mythology. There was not a sacred three-act Mario text waiting to be adapted. The movie takes the basic material and turns it into a parallel-universe dinosaur dystopia where a meteor split reality in two, mammals evolved in our world, reptiles evolved in Dinohattan, and a missing meteorite shard could merge both dimensions. That is not faithful in a literal sense, but it is an actual idea. Honestly, Super Mario Bros. was doing the multiverse before the multiverse became every studio’s favorite emergency button. Dinohattan is basically Jurassic New York, and the movie’s weirdness is part of what makes it interesting. It is not the Mushroom Kingdom from the games, but it has its own grimy, steampunk, fungus-covered personality. We talk a lot about the Blade Runner comparisons, but what stood out on this rewatch was how much the movie also feels like it is chasing the shadow of Tim Burton’s Batman. It takes something bright, silly, and childish, then tries to make it darker, stranger, and more adult. That approach clearly did not work for everyone, but we have a lot of affection for it. Kids’ movies in the ’80s and early ’90s were just different. They were allowed to be creepy, gross, inappropriate, and occasionally traumatizing. Super Mario Bros. fits right into that era alongside things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Batman, and The NeverEnding Story. The movie has strippers, fascist cops, fungus rebellion, de-evolution machines, and Goombas with tiny heads and giant bodies. Is that a weird fit for Mario? Absolutely. Is it boring? Not even for a minute.  We also give the movie credit for how many game references it actually does work in. The rocket boots turn Mario’s jumping into something that can function in live action. Big Bertha becomes a human version of the giant red fish. The Shy Guy influence shows up in the masked construction-site goons. The flamethrowers nod toward the fire flower. The fungus becomes a strange version of the Mushroom Kingdom. Even the idea of the king being transformed into fungus feels like it has roots in Super Mario Bros. 3, where kings are magically turned into other creatures. The movie is not accurate, but it is not careless. The casting is another place where the movie works better than its reputation. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo actually have a believable older brother / younger brother rhythm. Hoskins has that gruff, working-class warmth, and Leguizamo gives Luigi an earnest romantic energy that makes the Daisy storyline work better than it probably should. We talk about how the movie shifts the romantic focus from Mario to Luigi, which is technically a departure from the games, but it makes sense for this version. Luigi is younger and more openly swept up in the adventure. And then there is Dennis Hopper as King Koopa, who is operating on his own frequency the entire time. He is not a giant turtle monster, but he is slimy, vain, germophobic, reptilian, and weirdly charismatic. There is a little Jack Nicholson Joker energy in the performance, especially in the way he treats villainy like a campaign speech. The mud bath, the “monkey” obsession, the de-evolution chamber, Iggy and Spike, the Goombas, all of it is ridiculous, but it gives the movie texture. Key Debates & Takeaways The real debate of this episode is whether the things people call LOWS are actually the movie’s HIGHS. The darkness, the weirdness, the bizarre production design, the loose relationship to the games, these are the same things that make Super Mario Bros. (1993) worth revisiting. We'd rather watch a failed movie with imagination than a safe movie with no pulse. That said, we do get into the real lows. The opening animation feels weak for a movie based on a video game. There is a lot of obvious ADR, with lines stuffed into wide shots and reaction shots to patch the story together. Some studio edits are painfully visible, especially around the de-evolution scenes. Toad getting set on fire feels mean in a way the movie does not really need. “Hail Koopa” is probably a little too blunt. And the ending is rushed, with Koopa’s final dinosaur form looking especially rough. The biggest low, emotionally, is that we never got the sequel. The cliffhanger with Daisy coming back in full commando mode is cheesy, but we'd have absolutely shown up for Super Mario Bros. 2. That is the strange legacy of this movie. It is not a great Mario movie, but it is a fascinating one. It is messy, creative, creepy, funny, and way more memorable than its reputation suggests. Topics Discussed Super Mario Bros. 1993 review Bob Hoskins as Mario Mario John Leguizamo as Luigi Mario Dennis Hopper as King Koopa Samantha Mathis as Princess Daisy Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton Super Mario Bros. live-action adaptation Why Super Mario Bros. was hated Super Mario Bros. movie box office flop Dinohattan and Jurassic New York Super Mario Bros. multiverse story Super Mario Bros. video game references Rocket boots and Mario jumping Big Bertha and the Shy Guys Goombas practical effects King Koopa de-evolution chamber Tim Burton Batman influence Blade Runner influence on Dinohattan “Trust the fungus” Super Mario Bros. sequel that never happened 🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movie-highlow/id1494972813 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5F6GMoqeJcahbZtk592a9a 📲 Follow Movie HighLow: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moviehighlow

    28 min
  4. WHIPLASH (2014) | In Spite Of Fletcher? Or, Because Of Him? (High)

    Jun 18

    WHIPLASH (2014) | In Spite Of Fletcher? Or, Because Of Him? (High)

    On this week's Movie HighLow, we go High on Whiplash because it is one of the rare movies about greatness that does not let greatness off the hook. It looks like an inspirational story about a young jazz drummer pushing past his limits, but the more we talk about it, the darker it gets. Whiplash (2014) is not just asking whether Andrew Neiman becomes great. It is asking what he has to cut out of himself to get there. That is the real question of the episode: does Andrew become great in spite of Fletcher, or because of him? And the uncomfortable answer we keep circling is that it might be because of him. That does not make Fletcher right. It does not make his abuse noble. But it does make Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash a much more complicated movie than a simple mentor-from-hell story. This is a movie about ambition, control, humiliation, obsession, and the cost of becoming the person you think you’re supposed to be. Main Discussion In this episode, we dig into Whiplash, written and directed by Damien Chazelle, and why it still hits like a snare drum to the face. The movie stars Miles Teller as Andrew Neiman, a young jazz drummer at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory, and J.K. Simmons as Terence Fletcher, the terrifying conductor who treats music education like psychological warfare. The movie won Oscars for Simmons, editing, and sound mixing, and honestly, all three wins make perfect sense. This thing is built like a pressure cooker. The central debate is Andrew’s transformation. By the time we get to the final performance at Carnegie Hall, Andrew does become something different. He takes control of the stage, pushes past Fletcher’s sabotage, and turns “Caravan” into a declaration of war. But we also talk about how even in that moment of victory, he still hands control back to Fletcher. That final exchange of looks between them is thrilling, but it is not cleanly triumphant. Andrew gets Fletcher’s approval, and that might be exactly the problem. We spend a lot of time on Fletcher because J.K. Simmons gives one of those performances that feels almost unfair to everyone else in the movie. He is part jazz instructor, part drill sergeant, part horror villain. The “not my tempo” scene is the obvious centerpiece, but what makes Fletcher so scary is not just that he screams. It is that he knows exactly when to lower his voice, when to charm, when to humiliate, and when to make an entire room afraid to breathe wrong. He does not simply teach through fear. He builds a world where fear is the tempo. The episode also gets into Fletcher’s philosophy, especially the idea that there are “no two words in the English language more harmful than good job.” We do not dismiss that line outright, which is part of what makes the conversation interesting. There is something seductive about Fletcher’s argument. Maybe comfort does kill greatness. Maybe some people only reach their full potential when someone refuses to let them settle. But the movie also gives us Sean Casey, the former student whose story reveals the human wreckage behind Fletcher’s method. For every Andrew who might become Bird, there may be someone else who gets destroyed. Miles Teller’s performance as Andrew is another major High. He has to start the movie with this open, almost boyish hunger and then slowly harden into someone who has internalized Fletcher’s cruelty. We talk about the family dinner scene as one of the clearest examples of that shift. Andrew is patronized by relatives who do not understand what he is chasing, and he finally snaps back with the kind of contempt Fletcher has been teaching him. The “Lincoln Center” gut check from his father is brutal because it cuts through Andrew’s self-mythology for just a second. That father-son relationship, with Paul Reiser as Andrew’s dad, becomes one of the most emotional parts of the discussion. His father is not trying to crush him. He is trying to keep him human. The movie theater scene with the Raisinets is small, but it says so much about Andrew’s willingness to tolerate discomfort, to eat around the thing he does not want, to subtract pieces from his life if that is what the goal requires. By the final performance, watching Andrew through his father’s eyes changes the scene. From inside the music, it feels like triumph. From the hallway, through his dad’s face, it looks like losing him. We also talk about Nicole, played by Melissa Benoist, and why that relationship matters more than it first appears. Andrew’s breakup with her is not just a young guy being arrogant. It is the movie showing us that he has already accepted self-erasure as the price of greatness. Later, when he calls her before the Carnegie Hall performance and realizes she has moved on, the scene lands because it shows what he chose. He wanted greatness so badly that he made himself unavailable to ordinary happiness. Key Debates & Takeaways The biggest question we wrestle with is whether Whiplash is an inspirational movie or a horror movie wearing the skin of one. We both come down on the idea that Fletcher is probably the reason Andrew reaches that final level, but that does not mean Fletcher is justified. That is the uncomfortable brilliance of the movie. It refuses to make the moral math easy. We also get into the missing chart scene near the end and whether Fletcher sabotaged Carl, whether Andrew panicked, or whether it was all just another test. The movie leaves just enough room for doubt, which keeps the tension alive. Our one real Low is more of a nitpick: what exactly was Fletcher’s plan if Andrew did not come back onstage? The finale is incredible, but the logic of Fletcher’s revenge depends on Andrew reacting in the most insane, perfect way possible. Still, that final scene is why Whiplash remains such a monster. The editing, music, cinematography, sound, and performances all lock together. It is exhilarating and upsetting at the same time. Andrew may become great, but we are not convinced he is okay. If anything, the ending feels less like happily ever after and more like the beginning of a very lonely life played at double time. Topics Discussed Whiplash 2014 review Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash Miles Teller as Andrew Neiman J.K. Simmons as Terence Fletcher Terence Fletcher abuse and teaching methods Andrew Neiman ambition and obsession Whiplash ending explained In spite of Fletcher or because of Fletcher “Not my tempo” scene “Were you rushing or dragging?” “There are no two words more harmful than good job” Whiplash final performance Caravan at Carnegie Hall Andrew and Fletcher final scene Paul Reiser as Andrew’s father Whiplash family dinner scene Nicole and Andrew breakup Whiplash missing chart scene Jazz, perfectionism, and self-destruction Whiplash as a horror movie about greatness 🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movie-highlow/id1494972813 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5F6GMoqeJcahbZtk592a9a 📲 Follow Movie HighLow: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moviehighlow

    39 min
  5. THE HAPPENING (2008) | Be Scientific, Douchebag (Low)

    Jun 12

    THE HAPPENING (2008) | Be Scientific, Douchebag (Low)

    The Happening is a bad movie with a genuinely good idea trapped inside it, which might be the most frustrating kind of bad movie. On paper, M. Night Shyamalan making an R-rated eco-horror film about nature turning against humanity should at least be creepy. The planet mounting a defense against us? Plants communicating through airborne neurotoxins? Mass panic spreading through the Northeast? There is a real movie in there somewhere. But The Happening (2008) keeps finding the least frightening version of every possible choice. Wind blows through trees. Grass sways. People stare blankly. Mark Wahlberg says science words like a man who has never been inside a classroom voluntarily. And somehow, a movie built around mass suicide, environmental collapse, and social breakdown becomes funny in ways it absolutely does not seem to understand. That is why this episode goes Low. Not because the concept is worthless, but because the execution is so bizarre that the movie becomes less of a thriller and more of an accidental comedy about hot dogs, lawnmowers, lemon drinks, and the least convincing science teacher in film history. Main Discussion In this episode, we try to answer the obvious question: is The Happening still terrible, or has time been kinder to it? After rewatching it, the answer is that it is still terrible, but in a way that is almost impossible to look away from. This is not some forgettable bad movie where nothing happens. Too much happens. People jump off buildings, feed themselves to lions, lie down in front of lawnmowers, and deliver lines like they are speaking a language recently invented by aliens. We spend a lot of time talking about where The Happening sits in M. Night Shyamalan’s career. This is not a lazy “Shyamalan was never good” conversation. He had already made The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village, so we know he understands suspense, dread, silence, and atmosphere. That is part of what makes this movie so confusing. He takes a concept that could work and then builds it around one of the least cinematic villains possible: the wind. And that becomes one of our biggest problems with the movie. Wind, trees, and grass are not automatically scary just because the score says they are. You can only cut to ominous leaves so many times before the threat starts to feel like aggressive landscaping. Because the plants themselves cannot do much visually, the movie leans on the suicide imagery, and the best version of that comes right at the beginning. The construction worker scene is probably the movie’s strongest sequence. It is eerie, simple, and genuinely upsetting. Bodies falling one after another from a building is an image that actually works. But after that, the movie keeps trying to escalate, and the deaths start getting more ridiculous than horrifying. The lion scene. The lawnmower scene. The shotgun house. The movie clearly wants these moments to be shocking, but they often play like slapstick with blood. We also get into the whole neurotoxin explanation, which sounds science-adjacent until you think about it for more than five seconds. If the toxin shuts off self-preservation, does it also shut off pain? Reflexes? Panic? The basic human instinct to move when something horrible is happening to your body? The movie wants the rules to sound scientific, but every new death makes the logic feel shakier. Then there is Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore, one of the strangest pieces of casting in modern studio horror. We talk a lot about how hard it is to buy him as a gentle, thoughtful science teacher. It is not just that he feels miscast. It is that every line seems to become more awkward once he says it. “Be scientific, douchebag” basically becomes the thesis statement for the whole performance. Zooey Deschanel as Alma has her own problems too. While she is not inherently a bad actress, this movie gives her almost nothing that works. Her relationship drama with Elliot is supposed to give the story emotional weight, but it mostly feels like filler. The whole marriage subplot, the guy calling her, the tiramisu betrayal, the tension between them, none of it feels urgent or real. John Leguizamo’s Julian basically has to explain their marriage problems to us because the movie cannot make us feel them. We also talk about Julian handing off his daughter Jess, including the very weird “don’t take my daughter’s hand unless you mean it” moment. In theory, it should be emotional. In practice, it feels like one more example of characters saying things no human being would say in that exact situation. And then there is the hot dog guy. Wow. Somehow, he is the first character to seriously suggest that plants might be behind everything, but he also cannot stop talking about how hot dogs have a cool shape and protein. That is The Happening in one scene: useful exposition wrapped in total nonsense. Key Debates & Takeaways One of the biggest questions we keep coming back to is whether The Happening is secretly supposed to be a B movie. Shyamalan has talked about it that way, and though that explanation is tempting, we do not fully buy it. If it is supposed to be funny, the movie is too stiff. If it is supposed to be scary, it is too funny. The tone never settles, and that is what makes the whole thing so strange. That said, we do find a few highs. The premise is strong. The opening scene works. And the Mrs. Jones section near the end is probably the closest the movie gets to matching its own weird energy. By the time we get to “you eyeing my lemon drink?” the movie has become so bizarre that the creepy old lady sequence almost feels right. It is awkward, uncomfortable, funny, and unsettling in a way the rest of the movie keeps trying and failing to be. The ending is another major discussion point. Elliot and Alma walk into the wind, the threat just stops, the news explains the movie, Alma is pregnant, and then the Happening starts again in Paris. It is abrupt, convenient, and weirdly underwhelming. We even end up workshopping a better explanation than the movie gives us, which is never a great sign. By the end, The Happening is not just a bad environmental horror movie. It is a movie full of interesting ideas, terrible dialogue, miscast leads, accidental comedy, and moments so strange they deserve to be preserved. It fails, but at least it fails memorably. Topics Discussed The Happening 2008 review M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-rated movie Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore Zooey Deschanel as Alma Moore John Leguizamo as Julian The Happening killer plant theory Airborne neurotoxins in The Happening Environmental horror movies Why The Happening is unintentionally funny “Be scientific, douchebag” scene The Happening construction worker opening The Happening lawnmower scene The zookeeper lion death scene The shotgun house scene Hot dog guy plant explanation Mrs. Jones lemon drink scene “You eyeing my lemon drink?” The Happening ending explained The Paris ending in The Happening M. Night Shyamalan career low points 🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movie-highlow/id1494972813 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5F6GMoqeJcahbZtk592a9a 📲 Follow Movie HighLow: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moviehighlow

    34 min
  6. TAXI DRIVER (1976) | Martin Scorsese’s Most Disturbing Masterpiece (High)

    Jun 5

    TAXI DRIVER (1976) | Martin Scorsese’s Most Disturbing Masterpiece (High)

    Taxi Driver is not great because Travis Bickle is cool, misunderstood, or secretly right. It is great because Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Robert De Niro, and Bernard Herrmann drag us close enough to understand him without ever letting us feel safe around him. That is the central tension of this Movie HighLow episode: Taxi Driver (1976) still feels disturbingly alive because the movie understands loneliness before it becomes ideology, isolation before it becomes violence, and fantasy before it becomes a headline. Fifty years later, Scorsese’s film still has a pulse because it does not flatter the audience. It asks us to sit in Travis’s cab, hear his thoughts, absorb his disgust, watch him mistake obsession for purpose, and then deal with the fact that the world might reward him anyway. That is why this one goes High. Not because it is easy to watch, but because it gets harder to shake every time you revisit it. Main Discussion This episode digs into Taxi Driver as one of those movies that may not fully hit the first time you see it. The argument here is that good movies provide answers, but great movies ask questions, and Taxi Driver is nothing but questions. What does Travis Bickle actually want? Is he trying to save anyone, or just looking for somewhere to aim all that rage? Is the ending real, fantasy, afterlife, media mythmaking, or some nightmare combination of all of it? A huge part of the conversation centers on how Paul Schrader’s script builds Travis through voiceover without using it as a shortcut. The journal entries are not just exposition. They are a trapdoor into Travis’s head. Lines like “my life needed a sense of someplace to go” become the key to the whole character. Travis is not tethered to anything. He has no politics, no real relationships, no taste, no emotional vocabulary, and no understanding of how to live among other people. So when Betsy, played by Cybill Shepherd, appears to him as an angel in the filth, he turns her into a symbol before he ever sees her as a person. That failed date with Betsy gets a lot of attention here because it is one of the most tragic and uncomfortable scenes in the movie. Travis has the right impulse at first. He works up the courage to speak to her, asks her out, and somehow gets further than he has any right to get. But then he takes her to a porn theater because that is the only version of “the movies” he knows. The episode’s take is that this is what makes Travis so disturbing and sad at the same time. He is not trying to offend her. He simply has no idea how warped his own normal is. The discussion also spends time on the movie’s split structure: the first half built around Travis’s fixation on Betsy, the second around his fixation on Iris, played by Jodie Foster. Foster’s performance is described as especially upsetting because she is both performing adulthood and visibly still a child. The diner scene, where Iris behaves like a kid while trying to act like someone much older, becomes one of the clearest examples of how finely tuned the film’s supporting performances are. And then there is Harvey Keitel as Sport, a character who is charismatic for about half a second before the horror of what he represents takes over. The episode points out how strange and important the scene between Sport and Iris is because it is the one major moment that steps outside Travis’s direct point of view. In a movie so locked into Travis’s head, that break matters. The biggest High, though, is Scorsese’s direction. The episode keeps coming back to how subjective the filmmaking is: the Alka-Seltzer fizzing like pressure in Travis’s skull, the cab being washed by fire hydrant water like some failed baptism, the camera drifting away from Travis during his painful phone call because even the movie can barely stand to watch him. Taxi Driver is not just about a man losing his grip. It is shot like the grip is already gone. Bernard Herrmann’s score also gets singled out as essential. It moves between smoky noir romance and pure psychological dread, almost like it is scoring two versions of Travis at once: the lonely guy who thinks he is in an old detective story, and the unstable man who might turn any street corner into a horror movie. Key Debates & Takeaways The biggest debate in the episode is the ending. One read is that Travis survives the shootout, gets turned into a hero by newspapers and public narrative, and returns to the cab still dangerous, still unresolved, still waiting for the next demon in the rearview mirror. The other read is that everything after the shootout has the quality of wish fulfillment: Betsy back in the cab, Travis admired, the world finally seeing him the way he sees himself. The episode does not flatten that ambiguity. It leans into it. The rearview mirror sting is treated as the perfect final note because it suggests that whatever Travis experienced, he has not been cured, redeemed, or understood. He has only been rebranded. Even the one Low is complicated: the desaturated shootout. Scorsese had to mute the blood to avoid an X rating, and while that compromise is frustrating, the episode admits the washed-out, pinkish, grimy look may accidentally make the scene feel even more nightmarish. That is the kind of conversation this episode has with Taxi Driver: not just “great movie,” but why the damage, compromises, contradictions, and unresolved questions are part of what make it one of Scorsese’s most disturbing masterpieces. Topics Discussed Taxi Driver 1976 review Martin Scorsese’s direction in Taxi Driver Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver screenplay Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle Travis Bickle loneliness and male isolation Taxi Driver and the incel reading Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driver score Betsy and Travis’s failed date Cybill Shepherd as Betsy Jodie Foster as Iris Harvey Keitel as Sport Albert Brooks in Taxi Driver Peter Boyle as Wizard Scorsese’s Taxi Driver cameo “You talkin’ to me?” mirror scene Taxi Driver ending explained Rearview mirror final shot Taxi Driver shootout and X rating New York City decay in 1970s cinema Is Taxi Driver Scorsese’s best movie? Previous listeners: we know it’s been a while. One of these days we’re gonna get organ-iz-ized. 🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movie-highlow/id1494972813 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5F6GMoqeJcahbZtk592a9a 📲 Follow Movie HighLow: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moviehighlow

    36 min

  7. May 25

    Movie HighLow Returns June 5th!

    Movie HighLow is back. After a very reasonable, not-at-all-concerning multi-year pause, Dom and Dee return June 5 with new episodes about the best and worst that cinema has to offer. Some episodes are HIGH episodes: classics, masterpieces, and movies worth revisiting. Some episodes are LOW episodes: disasters, trainwrecks, and movies where you start wondering if anyone on set knew they were making a movie. And sometimes, the best movies have lows, the worst movies have highs, and a few movies leave us completely confused by both. Subscribe now so the first new episode is waiting for you when Movie HighLow returns June 5. Send your HIGHS and LOWS to MovieHighLow@gmail.com.

    1 min
  8. THE FANATIC (2019) | A Complete Tonal Mess (Low)

    02/13/2021

    THE FANATIC (2019) | A Complete Tonal Mess (Low)

    This movie never decides what it wants to be. In The Fanatic, you’ve got a character study, a thriller, and a dark comedy all fighting each other… and none of them really win. And somehow, that’s what makes it so... fascinating?   We break down: Why the tone is completely all over the place The strange (but committed) performance from John Travolta How the movie keeps undercutting its own serious moments And why this story almost works… but never quite gets there   👉 It wants to be disturbing 👉 It ends up being confusing 👉 And sometimes… accidentally funny   🎧 Listen on your favorite platform: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movie-highlow/id1494972813 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5F6GMoqeJcahbZtk592a9a   📲 Follow Movie HighLow: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moviehighlow

    37 min
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About

Movie HighLow is a film podcast about the best—and worst—that cinema has to offer. Each episode, we go either HIGH or LOW and break down exactly what works, what doesn’t, and what went completely off the rails. Some movies are great. Some are terrible. Some are both. From iconic classics to fascinating disasters, we’re here to figure out why. Film analysis • Movie breakdowns • Movie reviews • High vs Low • Film podcast

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  • Creator
    Movie HighLow
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Explicit
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    © Copyright 2026 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Movie HighLow