Spoilerpiece Theatre Evan Crean, Megan Kearns, and David Riedel

Dave is under the weather this week (feel better soon, Dave!), so Megan and Evan cover the week's movies together. First, Megan reviews Agnieszka Holland's vital, yet harrowing drama GREEN BORDER (3:33), which follows a family of refugees from Syria, a border guard, and a group of activists providing aid to refugees, who converge on the Polish-Belarusian border during a humanitarian crisis. Then Evan and Megan dig into Shawn Levy's much-anticipated superhero film DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (26:26), which features Ryan Reynolds/Deadpool teaming up with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine! Thankfully we do a show where spoilers are the name of the game because otherwise, this one would be tough to talk about folks. We delve into the action, the comedy, the cameos, and the MCU at large in the context of the TV shows and the multiverse. Plus, in this week's Patreon exclusive audio, we discuss the winner of our summer heatwave poll, Sidney Lumet's 1957 legal drama 12 ANGRY MEN! 

Evan is off this week, so Megan and Dave braved this week’s releases. Actually, Dave didn’t see TWISTERS (2:39) — Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie legacy sequel starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos — so it’s up to Megan to tell you, dear listeners, that it’s kind of crap. She has some positive things say about it (Glen Powell, for example)…but not many. Both Megan and Dave saw WIDOW CLICQUOT (21:52), a period-piece biopic directed by Thomas Napper about Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot who took over her husband's champagne business after his death. French people, chateaus, business? Dave’s all about it (and all about Haley Bennett!). Megan liked it but didn’t love it. Finally, they both saw ODDITY (39:07), Damian Mc Carthy’s eerie horror film about a psychic (Carolyn Bracken) investigating her twin sister's murder, and his follow-up to CAVEAT. And they loved it! No complaints! Four stars! This movie is one creepy bastard! Over on Patreon, Megan and Dave talked about TWISTER, Jan de Bont's 1996 film starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, because apparently the pain of TWISTERS wasn’t enough. (We actually enjoy it!)

Well. It is a BANNER week on Spoilerpiece, gang. Megan and Dave discuss writer-director Nicole Riegel’s DANDELION (2:54), about a struggling singer-songwriter from Cincinnati (KiKi Layne) taking a shot at winning an opening slot at a biker gathering in South Dakota while also falling into an intense relationship with a semi-retired Scottish guitarist (Thomas Doherty). Then we get to THE BLUE ROSE (26:56). We’ll dispense with a description and leave it all in the audio, but please do buckle up. (And maybe get some popcorn and a burrito. Why the hell not?) Over on Patreon, we talk about CLUE in honor of Martin Mull, who left us in late June.

We just marked a national holiday in the United States, so you know what that means: It’s cash grab season! Megan and Dave talk about said (possible) cash grab, BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F (1:53). Eddie Murphy and cohorts return in the legacy sequel that continues the legacy of shittiness that BEVERLY HILL COP III unleashed on the world 30 years earlier. Ugh. Then Evan joins Megan and Dave to talk about KILL (16:41), a terrifically bloody action film from India that features a commando on a train trying to save his fiancée from bandits. It’s got loads of good killin’, but it’s not for the faint of heart. (It makes COMMANDO look fuggin’ tame.) Finally, Dave and Megan talk MAXXXINE (40:39), the third and possibly not-final chapter in the Ti West/Mia Goth saga that began with X and continued with the X’s prequel, PEARL. Over on Patreon, we talk about KLUTE to commemorate Donald Sutherland, who died on June 20, 2024.

This week Megan saw Yorgos Lanthimos’s KINDS OF KINDNESS (2:28), a whackadoo triptych fable starring Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, and Willem Dafoe. It’s getting all kinds of raves but also some drubbings — including Megan’s. Evan, Megan, and Dave watched CONVERSION (15:15), Zach Meiners's documentary about survivors — the film’s director, an ex-Mormon woman, and a famous drag queen — of so-called conversion therapy (programs designed to make queer kids straight, but in reality it’s trauma-inducing psychobabble). We had mixed reactions. Finally, everyone weighed in on A FAMILY AFFAIR (45:45), a rom-com directed by Richard LaGravenese  and written by Carrie Solomon starring Joey King, Nicole Kidman, and Zac Efron as three garbage humans apparently more interested in ruining each others’ lives than anything else. Reactions were not mixed. But we had fun taking it apart! And over on Patreon, our Pride Month poll winner is TRICK, a 1999 gay rom-com starring Christian Campbell, J.P. Pitoc, and — that’s right — Tori Spelling.

This week, Megan and Dave check out writer-director Jac Cron’s CHESTNUT (2:19), a low-key (very low-key) queer drama about Annie (Natalia Dyer), who, after graduating college in Philadelphia, falls into a love triangle with Tyler (Rachel Keller) and her maybe-boyfriend Danny (Danny Ramirez). But is Tyler in love with Annie? Or Danny? And is Danny really into Annie? Or Tyler? We have an animated discussion about this one. Then Evan joins Megan and Dave to talk about  FANCY DANCE (23:29), Erica Tremblay's Indigenous drama starring Lily Gladstone as Jax, a Seneca-Cayuga woman searching for her missing sister while caring for her niece, Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson). Throw into it Jax’s estranged father (Shea Whigham), an impromptu road trip to a powwow, and the missing-persons investigation for Jax’s sister and it’s an emotional 92 minutes. We all liked this one (one of us loved it). Over on Patreon, we watched THE FIRST OMEN, Arkasha Stevenson's horror prequel starring Nell Tiger Free, so check it out!