The Big Picture - The Top 10 Junk Sci-Fi Movies, ‘Moonfall,’ and Michael Mann’s ‘Ferrari’

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

In 2020, Chris Ryan and Sean identified a key subgenre in American movies—garbage crime—and laid out what makes it great. Today on the show, a sequel of sorts. With the release of Roland Emmerich���s interstellar disaster movie ‘Moonfall’ in theaters and Steven Soderbergh’s techno-anxiety thriller ‘Kimi’ now streaming on HBO Max, we are digging into a beloved sister category: junk sci-fi. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Chris Ryan Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Benifer is back. Brad and Jen are friends again. And Paris Hilton is somehow still making headlines. 20 years later, we're living in the world that the 2000s tabloids created. On this series, I'm going to tell you the story of a decade of American life through the trash we love to consume. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Claire Malone, and this is Just Like Us, the tabloids that changed America. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about junk. CR is here, and we are making a sequel to a very important episode of this podcast that we made back in November of 2020. That episode was about garbage crime. Today,

we're doing something a little different, a sequel of sorts, with the release of Roland Emmerich's interstellar disaster movie, Moonfall in theaters, and a new Steven Soderbergh movie, a techno-anxiety thriller called Kimmy, now streaming on HBO Max. We're digging into a beloved sister category of movie. Junk sci-fi, garbage sci-fi. Sci-fi that isn't very good, but we love it. C, are you excited about this episode? I can't wait. I like junk sci-fi.

It conjures images of decaying spaceship, basically stapled together in a far outreach on the outer rim where you and I love to pod. Yes. And before we get in our deck chairs and ride off into the great galaxy, let's talk a little bit of new stuff. First of all, I wanted to ask you about the Academy Awards. Are you familiar with that organization and that show? Am I excited for this upcoming iteration of it? Well, what did you think about the slate of nominees this year? Because it was probably the best slate they've ever had in the history of the award show. And by the same token, I'm obviously very concerned that people don't care about the show anymore.

I've been talking about that nonstop. I mentioned on the show earlier this week, this is my acceptance phase. I'm like, okay, this is now actually the only goal of the show now is to recognize the best works in filmmaking. And that is ultimately a good thing. But I don't know. What was your reaction when you saw the nominees? So I didn't really have very strong feelings about anything until this morning when I saw there was actually like a Jimmy Kimmel quote going around where it's like him just being like, how can don't look up get nominated and Spider-Man doesn't? And I'm kind of fascinated by this idea

because I wonder whether or not it would make any kind of material difference to the ratings of the ceremony, to the popularity of the show, to how we feel about the upcoming award ceremony if Spider-Man was just there as a sacrificial lamb. If it was just there as like window dressing to be like, Zendaya and Tom Holland are going to be here.

And this movie that a billion and a half dollars worth of people saw, it's like nominated. So let's pretend like this is all part of the tapestry of film, but in all like, honestly, like power of the dog is going to beat Spider-Man. Do you think that that would just like invoke this weird, like Marvel stands versus like campion standsans thing? What use would there have been

for Spider-Man to have been nominated for Best Picture? I don't think there would have been a rivalry. And I don't think even that Marvel Stans insist upon the fact that Spider-Man No Way Home should win Best Picture. I think it's more just about drawing curiosity eyeballs. That was the original premise when, I guess, the Hollywood Reporter first suggested that this movie was going to be making a bid, and obviously it didn't really have any legs at all whatsoever. As far as Kimmel's comments go,

I thought, I don't agree with the exact example he made. And I think that it could be maybe a little bit misperceived as being very cranky about what the Oscars are. But I've heard Bill Maher make a very similar point in the past and I'm not saying I agree

with this at that point either. But the sense that many of the films that are nominated here are very serious, often very sad and to the perception of some people,

pretentious. And that Spider-Man No Way Home, say what you will about its quality, it's a lot of fun. It was a fun movie. Sure. And not without its pretensions and sadness. I totally agree.

I think a very emotional movie, a movie that aspires to meaningfulness, even if it never quite gets there. And so I think the point Kim was trying to make was, Don't Look Up is this very kind of sometimes overwrought satire about climate change. And I think there point Kim was trying to make was don't look up is this very kind of sometimes overwrought satire about climate change and I think there are some funny if there are some funny parts in that movie Jonah Hill is hilarious in that movie so it's not that there's no comedy whatsoever so it's an odd example the power of the dog is probably a more accurate example to

the point he's trying to make because that's a grim film very good but very grim spider-man I don't is that the perfect example of the fun light-hearted movie that we all wish could be nominated at the Oscars it's probably not the best one but the truth is is that no one knows anything about what they want or what they think this show should be anymore myself included I've twisted myself in knots for three years I'm kind of done with it like I yeah you know I'm kind of just like it's you know what drive my car is nominated for best picture that is fucking mind-blowing it's. I can't believe that happened. I definitely never would have predicted it to happen.

I'm actually just happy about that, and I hope more people get a chance to see that film. I hope people get a chance to see Worst Person because of this. Totally. You know, I haven't actually seen Coda, but, like, all these nominations made me feel like I should probably check it out. Yeah, check it out.

It's pretty good. Yeah. I was bummed for Denis not getting nominated for Director. I thought that was, like, a tough look, but it's not like... Personally, I didn't love Belfast that much, but I get that that was cemented, that Branagh was going to get nominated from probably day one. The funny thing, I think, for this conversation,

when you get into the like, what's good for the Oscars and what should be nominated for the sake of the Oscars, is it's just like man this is people voting you know like there's really if there was a like a a carlisle group in the background being like let's just put our fingers on the scales and like make sure that some popular shit gets nominated and some funny stuff gets nominated and we got some movie stars in the front two rows. Like they would have done it. I totally agree. This is what the people, like this is what the guilds and the voters vote for.

So you're kind of like, it's really out of our hands. So you and I saw a bunch of our colleagues for the first time in a long time yesterday. We met up with a bunch of the gang from the Ringer NFL crew. We've got a ton of people in town for the Super Bowl. It's a lot of fun to see everybody.

And I'm talking to Bill Simmons a little bit, talking to Brian Curtis a little bit. And we're just looking at what the show used to be and my kind of fraud. Just Dremski huge drive my car guy. John has not seen that film yet, though. Maybe he will. He had some questions about what he should be checking out

from the nominees. But in the past, it would be like Super Bowl, AFC Championship, NFC Championship were the three highest rated shows of the year. Fourth highest rated show of the year was the Oscars. And then it'd be maybe 12 more football games, episode of CSI, episode of Criminal Minds, episode of Young Sheldon. And now it's like 36 football games. And then maybe game seven of the NBA finals. And then three episodes of Young Sheldon and then the Oscars. And I think that that was what was animating a lot of my anxiety.

And I mean, now it's cool that that's just over. In a way, I think the Denis thing that you pointed out is representative of what people still think could happen. I did a green room yesterday, by the way, my first ever solo green room that it was it was it was cool well people were really nice and they had great questions so that part of it was great um lots of engagement as they say which is a lot of degenerates also being like how to like how should i gamble everybody wants prop bets and and best bets i don't i don't i mean i i have like a decent track record of that but I'm nervous about losing people money when it comes to stuff like the Oscars.

Because if it were up to me, I would not have done well with Drive My Car yesterday. But I think the thing with Denis is they're thinking that this is a Lord of the Rings situation. It's like when part two drops, we shall ordain Denis the greatest filmmaker of all time, much like Peter Jackson. Do you think that part two is going to pay off

the same way that one did? Well, I think part two will probably involve a lot more zendaya uh and we'll have like a little bit of a different vibe it's not going to feel like the world build like world world building like militaristic elements that the first movie has i think it'll have a lot more sand mysticism um so to the extent that i think it'll be a spectacle i just wonder whether or not people will vibe on at the level they were like oh yeah this is cool like brolin and oscar isaac and all these people are like i get it like the families at war let's talk about the academy awards 2024 um there's a new film has entered the race vroom vroom it's called michael man's ferrari oh shit yeah so hit. Driver had so much fun making Gucci

that he was like, I'm staying in Italy and I'm staying in character and I'm staying in this accent. Get me another script set here. Let's do it. Not the cast I expected to see in Michael Mann's long awaited, long planned. 20 years.

Ferrari film. But Adam Driver is playing Enzo Ferrari. Penelope Cruz is playing his wife and Shailene Woodley is playing his mistress. I'm not sure I see an Italian in that cast there, but that's okay. Is this your most anticipated movie of the last five years? I mean, this must be, this is pretty big. I'm very happy to get another Michael Mann feature. You know, he's got the first episode of Tokyo Vice that he directed is coming in April so we'll get a peek at that.

When Bill and I talked to him for the three heat, I could see in the background he was going to adapt to a Mark Bowden Vietnam book for FX. I could see in the background there was a bunch of Vietnam War books on his desk. I don't know if that's an invasion of privacy to mention that,, there was a bunch of Vietnam War books on his

desk. I don't know if that's an invasion of privacy to mention that, but that was very public that he was working on that. So he's been kind of like in project limbo for a while. And it's interesting, we're going to get into these sci-fi movies. He just makes a kind of movie that I think is way too expensive for the lack of certainty that it's going to make any money. So it gets increasingly hard for him to essentially finance his projects, despite the fact that he's one of the most revered filmmakers of the last 40 years. Yeah, one gets the impression that he is very exacting in the way that his productions operate. And cares about shit that I don't think a lot of people care about anymore.

Yeah, and so it's been difficult for him. I mean, once upon a time, Ford versus Ferrari was a Michael Mann project, and that obviously shifted at a certain point to James Mangold. But this has been an object of fascination for him. He's 79 years old. He's getting up there. were incredibly making vital work and doing incredible stuff as filmmakers. But still, 79 is no joke for a movie that, you know, his movies are very muscular. They require a kind of physical intensity. So I'm excited for this. It's probably useful that Michael Mann, who I think was really the inspiration for Garbage Crime,

and I think Heat, everything kind of flows from Heat into the world of Garbage Crime, that we talk about him on this episode because let's talk about this junk sci-fi stuff okay because okay moon falls here i saw it it was bad um everybody's insane i did um but roland emmerich is a wildly important figure he's sure in this space he's i think he's lost his fastball a little bit but what his fastball even was is a little bit of a mystery to me. Now, he has been behind

some incredible works of junk sci-fi. Many of his works belong in the first ring of the Hall of Fame. Among them, I mean, Independence Day is almost like a disaster movie meets junk sci-fi movie, especially the latter half of that movie, though. When they get up on that ship, I'm like,

this is the junkiest sci-fi ever. Oh, and they're just like, though, when they get up on that ship, I'm like, oh, and they're just like, yeah, let's give it a cold. Yeah, that's that's a wild shit. Obviously, Stargate and Universal Soldier are first ballot Hall of Famers in this space. And, you know,

he operates from sort of like a 70s disaster movie approach to these films. He's not exactly what we're thinking of. I think when we're talking through this stuff, but thought it was appropriate with this movie coming out. And then with the Soderbergh movie coming out, Kimmy, which is sort of the inverse, is a very small paranoia thriller. But it's a movie about science and it's a movie about technology. And a technology that is used for ill-gotten gains.

And, you know, this is a movie that probably has more in common with a different kind of 70s movie, like a Clute-esque conspiracy thriller kind of a movie. Very good performance from Zoe Kravitz. Clearly like a stunt. So Soderbergh can put his camera in a million different positions and have a lot of fun. So it was like- Rita Wilson Assance continues. She was just in 1883. Oh, is that a fact? How's she doing there? She was loving it. She was having a whiskey punch with Faith Hill, talking about the frontier.

God bless. Well, this is a slightly different role for her in Kimmy. I liked Kimmy. It's definitely minor Steven Soderbergh, but also I think you and I both enjoy when Steven Soderbergh just dips into the genre pool and pulls out a freshly shorn, beautiful little baby sci-fi movie. So I thought it was very cool.

I just want to say this is bad content, but I now have made a rule for myself to not comment on Steven Soderbergh movies until I've watched them like two or three times. Wow. Because the last batch of these, I think I adore them, but No Sudden Move, Laundromat, High Flying Bird,

Let Them All Talk, all of them get better and better if you check them out more than once. And it's kind of weird because I think you could look at this phase and see these HBO Max movies specifically as they're so efficient. They seem somewhat light.

They have charms, but they're not overwhelming. But actually, when you go back and watch them, they're quite thoughtful. And they have quite a bit to say, which I find actually a rather rare occasion, occurrence in movies going forward. At first blush, they all seem like programmers. They seem like movies would be like the first part

of a double feature on a Saturday night at a grindhouse. And then on second viewing, you're like, this is the most profound genre movie I've ever seen. And then on third viewing, it lands somewhere in the middle, I think. The only one of these out of that recent batch that you're describing that I feel like is just the totally misunderstood

like borderline masterpiece is The Laundromat. That's the one where I was like, the first time I saw it, I was like, this movie is amazing. And I guess for some people, it was a little bit kind of overstating its point at times. But that one- To me, that's like,

that's what I wish Don't look up was it it feels like it it nailed what that was aspiring to i completely agree um so you know kimmy is probably the slightest i would say of all of these recently it probably is the most in common with unsane that clear boy thriller and side effects yeah which is like it's a little bit of like a down and dirty genre that people that people find a little bit disreputable but um i did think it worked very well it was also very fun to see derek delgadio the uh the magician in this film as a very unsavory character i really like derek i talked to him last year on the show and um so sort of just like cranked through his i think he watched his movie like three times last year right like on his uh scene the the like the diary that he has

yeah in and of itself is the film that derrick and frank oz made it's on uh it's on hulu and if you haven't seen that i highly recommend it but yeah it was once again you know shades of casting glenn kenney as the the porn reviewer yeah in uh girlfriend experience you know like he always knows when to pluck someone out of an unlikely circumstance and drop them in anyhow um i would recommend kimmy i would not recommend moonfall but there's still some laughs i think moonfall would be a great like vod rental um let's talk about junk sci-fi so you okay you were you were angling for this in almost the immediate aftermath of garbage crime and we waited a long time i i think that um i've been waiting for an opportunity to talk about a bunch of these movies with you

because I feel like these are very much the movies that we grew up on. Like these are if you go back to the origins of this made up genre

these are the tattered VHS covers that we would paw at every time we would go into a video store and like maybe we would think about

getting something good but at the end of the day we would buy it. Like we would rent yet another time we would rent Event a video store and maybe we'd think about getting something good, but at the end of the day, we would rent yet another time. We would rent Event Horizon or something like that. So in the 80s and 90s, I feel like these were a really popular brand of B-movie that Hollywood could pump out. Now, the thing is that we're going to get into a lot of rhetorical conversations about what constitutes garbage sci-fi because I think garbage crime, I had a pretty clear idea.

We had a pretty clear idea about what made Den of Thieves different than Heat. And in some ways, there are, in garbage sci-fi, there are those sister movies or those stepbrother movies where it's like,

this is a copy of a copy of this movie and that's what kind of makes it quote-unquote garbage. But sci-fi is a little bit harder to kind of wrap your arms around because sci-fi itself is like, well, what constitutes sci-fi? Is it only stuff that happens in space? Is it only stuff that happens in the future? Is it only stuff that involves advanced technology that we don't have? Or can Tremors be sci-fi? It's really kind of up in the air about how we define the genre,

but I have a very clear idea of the kind of movie that is garbage sci-fi and the kind of movie that's not, which is maybe even easier to go by. Before you get into describing those details, let me just suggest that if Heat is the birth mother for garbage crime, that the twin killing of star Wars and alien is basically where this genre grows from because every film that I put on this letterbox list that I built, every film that we've discussed, everything that happens here is basically after 1980. And when Hollywood decides it needs to capitalize on this moment of either a kind of dark and cryptic and gross kind of science fiction movie or a kind of booming, beaming battle in the stars.

Yes. There are some Earthbound stories, even one in particular that I love that I think fits the bill. But even then, it has shades of Star Wars. It has shades of alien. And so I feel like, do you agree that that is essentially the origin point? Yeah, it's either fighting or it's monsters in space. Right. Okay. But that's not a hard, fast rule.

I'm just saying that's like the origins. And like for Sean and I, I'm a little bit older, but like we had the same experience, I think growing up where the video stores were packed with movies that were essentially cheap knockoffs of space operas or monster movies in space yeah and i think i remember seeing i might have seen the

the box for um is it is it battle beyond the stars is that the the roger corman knockoff of star wars before seeing the seeing the star wars box and thinking like you know it's all about this like sensory moment of excitement you know like what can they put on the label that gets you fired up to see the movie this genre is simultaneously excellent at that because there's always some sort of like shimmering deep blue light you know glowing in front of a character's face and then right underneath it is like a ball of fire and a spaceship and when you're nine years old you're like god damn it like arnold schwarzenegger in sunglasses and then a robot war underneath his

head this is amazing i can't wait to see this movie and so you know a lot of the time these movies can be big disappointments i would argue that the low-end version of junk sci-fi, the bottom of the barrel, is much worse than the garbage crime bottom of the barrel. Oh, yeah, I think I agree with you. Do you agree with that? Yeah, because I think it depends on what you don't like about it. You know, a lot of these movies get lost in the sauce. Like, they think that there's something bigger than what they are. And one of the things that really delineates good sci-fi and garbage sci-fi is the search for truth out in the stars and whether or not you find anything. Now, most garbage sci-fi, they are

searching for truth out in the stars and then they find a demon out there. that's usually like the end point i that's but that's what makes this not 2001 you know like 2001 is about trying to understand man's place in the galaxy and the origins of life and everything like that and even some things i can't even understand that's not what event horizon is you know that's not what a lot of these movies are these movies are essentially about we went out we were on a mission, something went wrong, roll tape. Yeah, or there's a portal to blank dimension or an alien crash lands on Earth and wants to fuck and or annihilate human men

or two men from the past have been jet streamed into the future and must do battle until one of them dies. Like the, the premises are so they're super ridiculous. They're, they work hard to ground you in the story, but the production design is often either so cheap or so,

I guess like overmanaged that you can't help but be like, this is kind of ridiculous, but I love it. Like, you know, like you have to have a sense of humor about these movies, but you can't help but be like, this is kind of ridiculous, but I love it. You have to have a sense of humor about these movies, but you don't laugh at them. I think that's really the distinction here is none of these movies are one-tenth as good as Alien, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't watch them three or four times. No, that's exactly right. And there was a kind of modesty of intention with a lot of these movies. Like, if you go through,

you'll see a bunch of these movies that were like budgeted at 45, made 65. You know? And that like, and that had successful home video lifespans afterwards,

which was a huge part of this genre, I think, because these movies lived on on cable and they lived on in video stores in a way that I think supported the idea of like, on cable and they lived on in video stores in a way that I think supported the idea of like, yeah, it doesn't have to be a franchise. It doesn't have to

be a blockbuster. We can just use the spaceship set we used from that last movie, light it in a purple tint rather than a red tint and cast Laurence Fishburne again. We're good. So what is and isn't? tell me about the distinctions so i have a couple of things i want to throw out there that i don't think they are or that i that they are this is what i i think uh garbage sci-fi is not um garbage sci-fi is not andrew nickel movies so andrew nickel who uh did gattaca you know like of very intellectually driven log lines of exploring the human condition. That's not what garbage sci-fi is. Even though I don't think all Andrew Nichol movies are good, but I do think that they have

a kind of highfalutin aim. So Andrew Nichol's films for anybody who is wondering, Gattaca is his debut feature. He wrote the screenplay for The Truman Show. And then Simone, the Al Pacino film about a robot. Do you have any Simone impressions in you? I have no... That's not... Who's the woman in Simone?

I believe it was a supermodel who played the lead figure. Who was it? Let's take a look. Rachel Roberts. Never heard of her. Interesting. I believe she was a model. Did he do other sci-fi though or am I making that up? Well, he made Lord of War which is not a sci-fi film. And then he made In Time which

is a sci-fi film. That's Timberlake, right? That's Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. I would say it is right on the edge. That's the one where you have a certain amount of time yeah you're on your forearm that indicates how much time you have left to live and don't people like try to buy the time from you and stuff time is currency in that world and uh that was a movie that like I could imagine it being sold incredibly well in the room and then when I watched it, I was like, this movie is stupid. Okay, so maybe Nickel is borderline.

Well, he's been trending down, I would say, as much as I like Gattaca. So here's some other stuff that's not garbage. Looper, the Rian Johnson movie.

Definitely not, yeah. Chronicle, not garbage. Definitely not. The Michael B. Jordan movie directed by Josh Trank. So you just mentioned two really good movies.

Now, is it because those movies are really good that's why it's not garbage sci-fi? Because I think they have something of like an indie movie sensibility. You know what I mean? And even though

I think I wouldn't be surprised if Josh Trank and Rian Johnson love a lot of the movies we're about to name, I think that they were ultimately using sci-fi to make

very human dramas. And like Looper winds up being like one of the best sci-fi movies of the decade and I think even though it's like two dudes fighting across time but it turns out it's the same dude it's like that could be a Van Damme movie

but it also could be like an Ingmar Bergman movie you know fortunately he fuses the two which is part of what makes it so good Moorhead and Benson movies way too philosophically driven to be garbage sci-fi. Midnight Special, the Jeff Nichols movie. And then I would also categorize all John Carpenter ripoffs by prestige directors. Thinking of the guest, movies where they use the 80s John Carpenter font and keyboard sound,

but then it's like kind of like a cool, like prestigy A24 movie, if that makes sense. Those aren't garbage sci-fi. Alien movies are not garbage sci-fi. Superhero IP is not garbage sci-fi. Wait, let me interrupt you one second. Okay, because we're going to get into whether Alien 3 is garbage sci-fi. No, I want to say Alien Resurrection is garbage sci-fi. Now, I think Alien 3 is not. Alien 3 to me is like industrial goth metal sci-fi. But Alien Resurrection, the production design is kind of like gloopy and junky and neon green. Right.

This is the Winona Ryder one, right? Yeah, this is the Jean-Pierre Jeunet one. And it's like, the premise is really weird and silly about clones. And it doesn't feel like it has any of the like doom spirit that the first three do. But I think ultimately, like all the like Sigourney Weaver falling back

into like the pit of alien stuff and like the mother relationship is like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't really catch that in a lot of like the other movies that we're talking about. True. Like, I still think it's part of like a larger mythology,

whereas like a lot of these movies are pretty self-contained. That being said, I think you could make an argument that covenant has garbage elements, but ultimately when you get into the two fast benders of it all it kind of becomes

something bigger and like it becomes about like the mythology of this world of engineers right? It's such a tough one because there are things

in that movie that are radically more sophisticated than in any of the movies we're going to list here. Right. So here's where we get into like the crucial

conversation point I wanted to have with you. In crime, I felt like I could just... I knew it when I saw it. I knew whether it was garbage or not. Sci-fi is like there's the matter of... There's the matter of intention. Did the filmmakers have grand intentions

with this movie and it just fell short? Or were they like, we know we're making a space western, let's just get after it? And then there's the matter of perception, which is like how the audience has received it since its release. So for instance, something like sunshine,

I think this Danny Boyle movie that you and I both adore with Killian Murphy. And it's, it's got like all these incredible visuals, like really like some of the most striking visuals you'll see outside of 2001 in a sci-fi movie and it gets into like all these ideas about our relationship

to our own existence and then it's also about dudes nuking the sun and a devil who's like on board this spaceship you know like there is garbage in it but I think it ultimately maybe transcends garbage sci-fi really depends on the day i watch it and really and maybe how if i've had any uh

any drugs because i would say the first half of it is beautiful sci-fi and the second half of it is garbage like when they're just like fighting the demon what wins out that's that's really the question first half i like that's what i choose to remember i, that's really the question. I remember the first half. I, like, that's what I choose to remember. I choose to remember, like, the, like, what do you see part and, like,

the guy, like, trying to close the, the shades on the spaceship before the sun rises. This is also the movie in which, like, the, there's, like,

a cool-down room, like, a relaxing room, right? Where there's sort of, like, you can walk in and you have four square walls of, like, butterflies landing on flowers and things like that. Sunshine, I think, is, like, is like one of the you have that in your adu but it's

just it's just jets tape yeah no it's just zach wilson highlights um i feel good about that you know he made about 12 to 14 solid throws in 2021 so there's a lot of a lot on a loop there birds chirping it's seam. Those birds are just my tweets about how anguished I am about the Jets. Let me suggest a somewhat similar

conundrum here. Okay. So, Sunshine is 2007. In the year 2000, there were two movies about Mars released by major studios.

One of them is called Mission to Mars. It's directed by the great Brian De Palma. It's directed by the great Brian De Palma. It is widely considered one of his biggest failures and is yet, to me,

a very fascinating movie. The other movie is called Red Planet. It was directed by Anthony Hoffman, who only directed one film. It's called Red Planet. Shout out.

Shout out, Hoffman. Stars of that film include Val Kilmer, Carrie Ann Moss in her first role after The Matrix, Benjamin Bratt, Tom Sizemore,

your guy, Simon Baker, Terrence Stamp. This movie is widely considered a bad film. It's so great when they just get like a classical

British actor and they're just like stand there and say these words and the guy is just like I did Lear. Like I did Lear. actor and they're just like stand there and say these words and the guy is just like i did leer like i did leer well even more so stamp is like i was the sexiest man in london between 1967 and 1974 and now i am standing between carrie ann moss and val kilmer reading dialogue about biologist

the third biologist on this mission so to me it's like okay are both of those movies junk sci-fi are neither of them junk sci-fi how do we qualify i think red planet is junk and i think mission to mars is not even though mission to mars is junky it's about like finding life beyond earth in a cool way not not in a not in a way that they like you know this is about science's exploration of the universe, not, oh, we got to the other end of the universe and found out that there was just a dimension of hell there. Let me ask you something. What do you think the import influence

and lifespan of the Matrix is on all of these movies? Well, it gets into like the, how much do you consider terrestrial stuff to be sci-fi? So my feeling is you can go above or you can go below. You can go underwater. And I allow that as sci-fi. Okay.

But a lot of the stuff that happens on the ground, while the Matrix is obviously sci-fi, a lot of stuff that happens on the ground, I think it has like a higher degree, a higher bar to clear to become sci-fi. Do you agree with that? Because it feels like more pure action? or it has its roots in like another like it has like the way blade runner is just like a future film noir you know or even like i would say strange days has like that vibe

too that's interesting so i wanted to raise another figure in this space and whether or not you think he fits you mentioned andrewol, a somewhat related character in this history of late 90s, early 2000s filmmaking in this genre, at least in this area, is Alex Proyas. So Alex Proyas has made I, Robot,

The Crow, Dark City, Knowing, and Gods of Egypt. Now you can make the case that all of those movies are garbage sci-fi or that none of them

are garbage sci-fi. Dark City in particular. I think dark city probably qualifies you know and it's considered like a cult classic of of sci-fi too it received one of the great raves in roger ebert's career actually oh wow but um it is it has all the elements for sure, but is it 6% too good? Well, okay. Yeah. And let me counter this with another example. Okay. Because I think this is the elephant in the room.

Is Starship Troopers garbage sci-fi? This is the most important film in this conversation. So I would say no, because all of the discourse around Starship Troopers in the years after its release suggests that it's a masterpiece about the rise of fascism and the militarization of society. Right? Correct. I don't think that that's what, like, you can't really, like, do a reading of any of the other movies we're about to talk about and be like, that's what this is about.

But what you just described was also the intent of the film. Exactly. It was not projected onto it. But its execution is all garbage. Like it's gory. It's cheesy. It's like lots of one-liners. It's got like incredible monster fights

and dickhead villains on the human side. Like there's all the hallmarks of garbage sci-fi in Starship Troopers. But I feel like Starship Troopers has like transcended the very genre that it propped up but that the problem here is that paul verhoeven has come to destroy this entire episode he is the person because he also total recall yeah total recall and robocop which is also ostensibly garbage science fiction but is one of the most sophisticated, entertaining, funny,

and simultaneously junky movies ever made. Total Recall is a huge part of this story. There's also like a kind of a related class. Like I was trying to think of, is the Running Man, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, junk sci-fi? Like Total Recall is not.

Total Recall is an out and out movie classic. It's one of the best movies of the last 50 years. I think I would allow Running Man in classic. It's one of the best movies of the last 50 years. I think I would allow Running Man in there. It's not on my list, but I think it's got that, like, in a future dystopia, this is, like, what we're doing.

But there's not a ton of technology in there, is there? There's not, but there is this sort of, like... I think the future dystopia is enough to sell it. Just going back to Starship Troopers for a second. Even though Verhoeven and, is it Heinlein? He's the author behind the original novel. A lot of their intent is there in the first place. Many critics missed it. And the movie did okay business, but was not a big hit.

And in some of the pans it got, people only underlined what you described. The sort of like the obvious clunky and junky and melodramatic aspects of the pans it got people only underlined what you described the sort of like the obvious clunky and junky and melodramatic aspects of the storytelling and the like gloopy giant bug quality of it because the movie was not embraced fully upon release can a movie become like emerge as junk sci-fi and then be removed from the halls i mean i so i i think that that's entirely possible i there's a couple of movies on our lists that i think you could make the argument have now started to enter into that phase of their appreciation in fact i think the shared number one is one that is like enough people have now decided that it's awesome that it's like is

it even bad anymore or does it just become like an awesome movie you know uh there's like a degree to which how much tongue and cheek appreciation you have for these movies i think it it kind of depends on it but the tongue and cheek does not necessarily mean you're not sincerely enjoying yourself you just know that what you're watching is garbage and does it matter if the filmmakers know that their tongue is in their cheek? Is it better or worse? I prefer the sincerity and let me make the decision. You know, I often, I'm not like a big satire person

when it comes to movies. Like I often find like the satirical films like fall a little bit short for me. Okay, so you're not a fan of Network or Dr. Strangelove? No, I mean more like really broad broad like tim burtony stuff like you know like where it's just like the characters are like caricatures in a way i mean network i think is is a masterpiece yeah okay so thanks so let me just make sure i'm clear on this you think patty chayefsky was a hack that's what you said right I think you could learn a lot from from Aaron Sorkin about sincerity

yeah and perhaps Paul WS Anderson as we don't insult him um let's talk about the key films here this is okay now is the time is there anything else kind of no I would just say there's a couple of like narrative things that happen in garbage sci-fi it's good to

look out for these these can also happen happen in garbage sci-fi. It's good to look out for these. These can also happen in sincerely good sci-fi. But whenever you get an unscheduled awakening from cryo sleep, shit's about to pop off. I would actually love to make a movie where people just successfully cryo sleep and then arrive at their destination and wake up. If we were back in the pre-pandemic times and we knew that Bill was as into cryo as he is right now,

we could film an incredible fake parody of BS waking up into a world. I have to wake BS up because Harden got traded. Yeah, or you have to wake him up and Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum are both 32 and they've been on the Celtics for 10 years and they're still a 500 team. They're still sixth in the East.

Marcus Smart's still there. They've had 150 players only meetings. Why did you wake me? No, you don't understand. Brad Stevens came back to the bench, but things are still fucked up. We need to go back. Okay. So that's go back. Okay.

So that's one great hallmark. I love that one. Anytime people on a spaceship discover an anomaly on the radar and feel compelled to investigate it, like a distress signal, a ship floating that they didn't expect to be there,

a ship that's disappeared 30 years ago. Yes, the abandoned or disappeared ship is critical. And you have to have a disagreement. There has to be a science officer who's like, it's our duty to investigate this. And then like a military guy who's like, my mission is not this. It's this thing over here.

And then there's like two people who are kind of caught in the middle. So I love when that happens. I've also think anytime you can get one of those characters in a spaceship specifically but in these garbage sci-fi movies to go full Ahab yeah and just be like I like all bets are off like I'm carving out my eyes or I've decided I'm gonna stay up here or whatever like that's when you're like we're really rolling now it's always it's always a science engineer or a medical officer who is not to be trusted.

This is, this is a key faction in this, in these films. Yeah. And it could be like the Paul Reiser esque character from aliens, like the Burke guy with the vest. Who's just like, I'm going to fucking smuggle these eggs back.

Or it could just be like some maniac who's just like, you know, I decided that flying into the sun is, is dope. Um, but the biggest thing that I think you should look for is like, what other genres are they getting employed? Like, great B movies are usually a combination of multiple genres. And some of my favorite garbage sci-fi is actually just a garbage

Western in space. Interesting. Okay. I feel like there's a couple of other key indicators. Okay. If a new technology has been introduced to humanity that many people are saying will change our lives forever but has been applied initially to animals or creatures of some kind and things seem like they're going really well in the first 12 minutes and then something chimp loves the metaverse yes that is a clear sign that it shit's about to go really really bad so that's one key thing i think also um also when that technology only works for like rich people oh yeah yeah like when it's like hey we guess what eternal life but only if you've got x amount of credits that's a perfect one um anytime a movie opens with a shot of the sky and something is blazing across it and crash lands,

like, but doesn't crash land in an open field. Like it has to crash land in like a suburban backyard, you know, like, then you're like, oh, okay.

So this creature is now like in the suburbs, you know, it's not, this is not a story of like discovery about like close encounters of the third kind. This is like some, something like a lizard landed in a pool and now it's going to eat the cat. You know, like that is junk sci-fi.

This is the argument for Predator 2, I would say, over Predator 1. Although I would say that my favorite garbage sci-fi movie from the Predator series is Predators. Okay. I'm going to let you speak about that shortly. Any film I feel like that has a phenomenon that it's titled after.

So I'm thinking specifically of the butterfly effect. Yes. You know, it just like, we're like, we reference it constantly after it's been released, but I literally don't even know if I've seen the butterfly effect. That's the Ashton Kutcher movie, right?

It is, yeah. Yeah. But I know exactly what that is and how to describe that scientific phenomenon. What do you think the over under is on the amount of times they say

the butterfly effect in the butterfly at least seven. As I said I'm not sure I've seen that film. Can you name any other actors in the film the butterfly effect is

Kunis in that. No she's not. Another is Anthony Hopkins in it. It seems like Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Derek Jacoby

are all in this film. No, Amy Smart is the female lead. Oh, man. Shout out. Your girl. Also, films that are based

on well-known source material that is widely derided. For example, Battlefield Earth. Yes. You know, this is not the works of William Gibson here. This is the works of a proponent of a mysterious religion. Yes, the guy from The Master, right?

Exactly. Anything else? I also like whenever like the, I mean, this was pretty common for the 80s and 90s but whenever instead of saying in a world the guy doing the voiceover for the trailer says on a world like because you're going to another world and whenever they give credit to something where it's like from the production company that brought you this other good science fiction movie but has no real like relationship to it's like a dude who was next to the guy at carl loco from the man who was born the same year empire strikes back was released yes yeah right somebody who once saw a philip k dick book at a used bookstore presents.

Okay, I have a couple more. One word titles. Jumper. Daybreakers. Rollerball. Underwater. Skyline. Paycheck.

Lucy. Push. Mimic. Simone. They go on and on. In addition to that, there is another key indicator just by looking at the title. And that is when the title features

the in front of a single word, which indicates that this item or this place is really the central issue here. For example, the core. You know where we're going? We're going to the core in this film. Have you seen that movie recently? Not recently, no okay um should i no okay but it's one of those things where you're

just like i can't believe delroy lindo stanley tucci hillary swank and aaron eckhart are talking about drilling into the core of the earth that's what these movies do though they get great performers to do dumb shit it's part of what makes them so good there's so many examples of the the the cell have you seen the cell the cell is a movie that thought it was the new alien and then we saw it and we were like ah this is just the cell what about the island remember the island i think it's too good too good for garbage sci-fi don't you think it's like the intentions of the island like Like Alex Garland can't be garbage sci-fi. What about The Arrival? Have you seen that recently?

The Charlie Sheen alien abduction movie? Oh, that is. Arrival is not garbage sci-fi. The Arrival is garbage sci-fi. No, not Arrival. Not Danny DeLue's Arrival. David Twohy's The Arrival. Yes, I think that that is.

Isn't he like a conspiracy theorist or something like that? I believe that's right. yeah um okay what else let me see if i can find a couple more the films on our list well here's one other movie before we start listing our movies that i wanted to pick your brain about because i don't think it's garbage science fiction but i think it's relevant to this conversation the fifth element yeah so there is a band of 90s sci-fi that is very colorful is got a lot of like really outrageous costume design they a lot of it is like sprung from this movie that is not on my frequency personally okay but i do acknowledge the fact that that is a almost vaudevillian brand of garbage sci-fi i'm feeling really good about this.

So, you know, we've created garbage crime. We elucidated recently the prestige dirtbag film. Yes. We're about to enshrine 10 movies into our junk science fiction. And let me tell you, you know who's got our back here? The homie Casey Bloys over at HBO Max because a lot of these are streaming on max there are so many of these movies on hbo max yeah if you fire up our number one movie that we're going to spend probably the

most time on out of all of these once you've completed this film just go to the if you also like right underneath this you'll you'll be set for the weekend if you want to catch up on some of these not masterworks at all but also fun movies to watch with a little bit of downtime, you'll be made in the shade on HBO. Let's talk about

Event Horizon, okay? Okay. So this is number one for both of us. We both picked five movies to make a 10 movie Hall of Fame here but we have some crossover

in Event Horizon. This is the alpha and the omega. This is why I wanted to do this with you. This movie was so fucking crazy the first time I saw it. And there was an experience that you would have,

especially when we were growing up. You go into a movie, and maybe you didn't have a lot of expectations for it. There wasn't the kind of level of constant conversation about movies that we have now. And also, for the most part, you can know almost everything about a film going into it, no matter what it is these days.

But that wasn't really the case back in, what was this, the late 90s, mid 90s when this came out? 1997. I remember seeing this in a movie theater. I don't know what prompted me to do that. And I don't want to give too much away about what happens in Event Horizon in case our listeners don't want to give too much away about what happens in Event Horizon in case our listeners haven't had a chance to check it out. But something happens

in the middle of it that is one of the crazier things you will see in a commercially released movie in your life. And I remember walking out of that movie and just being like, did I experience the same thing everybody else in this theater did? And as the years have gone by, this has just become the one where you're like, did you guys ever see Event Horizon? And it started to get more of a reputation of this incredibly dark depiction of space hell that is kind of like,

it's cheesy in places and there's parts where the plot seems to fall apart a little bit, but features two really cool performances in the leads where it's Sam Neill and there's parts where the plot seems to fall apart a little bit, but it features two really cool performances in the leads where it's Sam Neill and Lawrence Fishburne. Yeah, I mean, what do you think of this movie?

I love it. I think it's fascinating that it has accrued this massive cult following. I think Miles Suri at The Ringer has written about this movie a couple of times.

I think for people of a certain generation and the generation beneath us, it has emerged as a rarely well-executed fusion, which is horror in space. Now, obviously that is what alien does, but alien is a very careful and carefully executed movie.

It's very quiet for long stretches of time. It's very ominous. Event horizon is a very frantic and kind of big movie. It's a movie about big ships and a big journey and a big mission. And obviously it does completely turn on its access, like, you know, two thirds of the way through,

like you said, but the thing that I'm blown away by is it's made by somebody who clearly grew up watching a lot of B movies. And if you look at Paul WS Anderson, the rest of his career, you know, he had made the Mortal Kombat movie prior to this.

And then he goes on to basically make six Resident Evil movies. He's really stayed in this lane for a long, long time. And he did Alien vs. Predator, right? And he did Alien vs. Predator, yes. He's probably... He, along with Emmerich,

they're probably the... Truffaut and Godard of this genre. I think that's right, honestly. I think you couldn't have said it better. And so because of that, it's got a lot of style, and Godard of this genre. I think that's right. Honestly, I think you couldn't have said it better. And so because of that, it's got a lot of style, but not style that anyone would say is cool.

You know, like the production design of this movie is kind of amazing. Yeah. And it's clearly like a $50 million Paramount movie with Lawrence Fishburne in it. You know, it's a big deal movie,

but it also features some of the most grotesque shit you'll ever see in your life. Yeah. And they basically take Sam Ne neill who's this wonderful understated sort of i i kind of always like associate a level of like shyness to his performances like he's very like to and they turn him into colonel kurtz you know like they turn him into and it's a really really really cool movie like i think that there's enough twisty stuff in it that I wouldn't want to give it away in case

people are like, I was here for the Ferrari talk and now I'm just listening to you guys, but you should watch this movie. It's on HBO Max. But I wonder now, is this movie becoming

weirdly too good for what we're talking about? No, because I think that there's still, like, there are still parts of it where you're like, this guy just got blown out of an airlock

and then, like, just swims back to this spaceship or lawrence fishburne's characters motivations seem to shift dramatically in the last 30 or 40 minutes of this movie um so i think that there's still elements of like choppy b-movie schlockiness to it but i think all the stuff around it is just transcendent it's just amazing have you seen the director's cut of this movie? Well, I thought that that was a myth. I thought that the director's cut

was actually like they lost it to time. Is that true? Did they ever put one out? I don't know if you could ever see it. I mean, the rumor is that Paul W.S. Anderson had a 130-minute cut of this movie. Now, when you watch this movie, it does something that frankly,

a lot of junk sci-fi does, which is it gets in and out in under 100 minutes. You know, this is not, these epics are not epic. They are modest in execution. The rumor was that because Titanic was running over

on its production, Paramount needed to rush this movie out. And so the version that they ended up putting out, which I believe came out in the summer of 97 was way faster than Anderson wanted it to be but you can make the case that making this lean mean crazy quasi incoherent

movie actually made it more of an object of fascination it was a bomb at the time it only made 42 million dollars there was like 6 people there when I went and saw it is it better if these movies are bombs? Can there be a big, beloved box office hit that is also garbage sci-fi? That's an awesome question.

Do you have any example of that happening? I think it helps for it to be cult. I think it helps for it to be a cult movie, which means that it was neither commercially nor critically lauded when it came out. So it basically becomes a movie of the people. Well, I think a movie like The Day After Tomorrow or Independence Day, those movies were successful when they were released in theaters, but everyone kind of agreed. We were like, this movie is kind of stupid, but I love it.

Yeah. And so I think that there are rare occasions, but really the only person who's kind of capable of that is Roland Emmerich anyway. So maybe for the most part, it's an exception and not a rule um i mentioned stargate i feel like it's really important here this is the rare film one out of this whole genre that has spawned a megalopolis of ip there are like several stargate movies none of which i've seen after the original several seasons of several tv shows show on for like seven years or something and various iterations on the sci-fi channel and elsewhere i think it started out though as a

network tv show and then eventually got shifted because the star of macgyver was the star of yeah he portrayed the role that kurt russell was in so stargate is streaming on netflix right now if you haven't seen it it's a movie from 1994. It's a movie in which the military teams up with an Egyptologist to figure out what's going on in a stone archway that leads to a portal to another dimension.

It's as weird as that sounds. It also features something that I love in these movies, which is deeply talented people working very hard on dumb shit. So Kurt Russell and James Spader at the height of his James Spaderness in the early to mid 90s.

Spader is the Egyptologist. And then Jay Davidson, who had recently made a name for themselves in The Crying Game, appears in Stargate in a critical role as Ra.

Yes, the Ra of mythology. Yeah. And, never to be heard from again, Jay Davidson. This is the last thing that they did so remarkable stuff there um this is also where i think roland emmerich and dean devlin his writing partner and producing partner figure out their zone because universal soldier is their first

movie together it's way junkier and fun and i like like it. Stargate is like, give us another $35 million and we'll make a spectacle. Yes. I will open the life of the mind up to the world. This movie is a huge hit. It feels like it's kind of forgotten how much of a hit it was.

I mean, $200 million this movie. It's got a lot of really wonky stuff about the history of Egypt that I would say is not a verbatim history. And is it like the whole premise of Stargate is essentially like Kurt Russell is in the military and is like, this is a weapon. And James Spader is like, oh, this is like a palace of education.

Yes. Which is one of the true great premises for any garbage science fiction movie, which is like, what is the value and who has the rights to this ridiculous tool of power? Yeah. So very fun movie, good design. It actually holds up pretty well. I rewatched it.

Um, it is, it's also indicative of what I think you already underlined, which is like the spectacle part of it. Like sometimes these movies have to be events in order for them to work, even when they stink. And this movie was at the time I was 12 years old. I was like this

is probably the biggest movie that's coming out this year so it's important to take me to it also like that was in the same year that forrest gump and pulp fiction were released and i was like mom we have to go see stargate so and she definitely took me which i fiction it's no stargate john fantasy age 12 yeah well i came around eventually but i'm glad i get a chance to talk about stargate here what's what's on your list let's go with a ghost of mars oh yeah hell yeah because john carpenter in some ways is the father of all this shit but like i think he's too good to get dragged into it but ghost of mars you can pull in ghost of mars is basically rio bravo in space uh it stars natasha henstridge um, like a space soldier who is,

uh, charged with bringing ice cubes, convicted felon to space justice. And in the process of doing that, um, she's partnered with Jason Statham, who plays a guy named Sergeant Jericho Butler, uh,

ice cube plays desolation Williams. Oh, yeah. We almost went with that for Alice's name. It was almost Desolation Williams' fantasy. See, I'm surprised you didn't go with Clea Duvall's character's name, Bashira Kincaid. So this is essentially just like a Mars Western

with feral Mars colonists running around possessed by the ghosts of Mars from the title. It's told in a cool tribunal way where it's like Natasha Henstridge is answering for what happened at this disaster in this colony. But it's just way better than it has any business being considering the fact that it's about a guy named Desolation and a guy named Jericho fighting Mars ghosts.

And John Carpenter is the goat. You know what I mean? I would never put the thing on this list. I probably wouldn't even put... I don't know. Big Trouble in Little China doesn't really count because that's more mystical than it is sci-fi. It's close though. It's close. I wouldn't put Starman on this list. I think that's

too Spielberg-y and touchy. Vampires is obviously like a horror movie, but Ghost of Mars is probably in the vampires category of John Carpenter movies. That's like, you want to have something like really good one-liners and fight scenes for two hours and then go on with your day. Bang.

Yeah. Late period Carpenter is the least analyzed. Incredible blank check series on John Carpenter last year. I got to shout that out. Those guys, I listen to every episode they did on those movies because all of those movies

are so much fun. Ghost of Mars, I think is actually like the least fun in a weird way because it's kind of like junk sci-fi Rashomon. Well, there's a big fall off from Kurt Russell

to Natasha Henstridge with all due respect to Natasha Henstridge. And in fairness to her, she really is one of the first ladies of junk sci-fi in many ways. But it's a very entertaining movie.

I would take Vampires over it, personally, if we're looking at late 90s Carpenter. But I do like Ghost of Mars and the naming conventions in all of his movies. This is the man

who brought you Snake Plissken. Nobody is better at naming characters than John Carpenter. I love him so much. Similar movie. This movie is freaking 98 minutes. You know, just bang it's like it's saturday it's 2 p.m what else are you doing with your time you're gonna watch college basketball game or you can watch

fucking ghost of mars just watch it uh okay my next movie is a film that i watched for the first time a month ago i've never seen this movie before even though I'd been reading about it for a long time. I watched it on Tubi. Chris, I just read a data point that Tubi, which is a free streaming service that features lots of old films, their viewership was up 40% in 2021. And I'm not surprised because one of the films that they added was Vincenzo

Natale's Cube. The 1997 film that has gained a significant cult following. About six people who wake up and find themselves in a deadly cube and they have to find their way out of the cube. Another movie with a one-word title. The stars of this film include Nicole DeBoer, not familiar with her work. Nikki Guadagni, not familiar with her work. David Hewlett, Andrew Andrew Miller Julian Reishings

Wayne Robson and Maurice Dean went this is a low budget independent movie it cost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to make because all they needed was a bunch of jumpsuits and a cube this rules what a great idea it's it's a really really interesting movie it's a really violent movie it actually does remind me a little bit of a deeply scaled down Event Horizon because it is very bloody at times. It's very paranoia inducing, very entertaining. Not the greatest performances you'll find in the world, but Natali is an interesting figure as well.

It took him a long time to kind of recapture this. He made a couple of science fiction movies in between this and what I think is one of his masterpieces, a movie called cypher and then a movie called nothing but in 2009 he made splice which is a uh another science fiction horror movie but it's like it's got that's got a huge cult following right huge cult following and um is very very effective stars adrian brody and sarah polly and if you haven't seenice, I recommend it as a nice double feature with Cube. What do you got? That's a good recommendation.

I have, the next one I have is Freejack, which is the one movie I'll put on solid ground here. Everything else is space or underwater. Freejack stars Emilio Estevez as a fucking F1 driver who dies in a race, but gets freejacked into the year 2009 so that his body

can be inhabited by the soul of a rich man played by Anthony Hopkins. And then it's basically like the part of Total Recall that's set on Earth for the next hour and a half where Emilio Estevez,

who does not want Anthony Hopkins, his soul and his body goes on the run with Renee Russo, who used to be his girlfriend back in the day when he was just an F1 driver. It's currently with Anthony Hopkins and is being pursued by Mick Jagger across a dystopian Los Angeles where there is barely any ozone layer left as described by the New York Dolls singer David Johansson, who does a very helpful expository scene in this movie.

This movie was directed by Jeff Murphy. It is... Bobby, thank you for mentioning. Bobby said, if I die in a tragedy, Chris, you can freejack my body. That's really cool of you. This is what you want,

man. I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been remade. I agree. Just given Drive to Survive's popularity, you know? Should we do it?

Yeah, why not? Should we spec it out tonight? Lewis Hamilton gets free jacked. You can still do Hopkins. He's still kicking. You're making a joke and this is not a joke.

I know. We should probably just cut this out of the pod come over tonight we'll go back to back to separate place Mick Jagger with push a tea no Rihanna great great good

yeah and who's and so Lewis Hamilton and Rihanna in free Jack but with fucking Anthony Hopkins is back definitely He's just reprising the role. He doesn't have to leave Malibu. We can just shoot all his scenes in his living room. They're all on Zoom anyway. Yeah. I love it. You know, Jeff Murphy, really underrated

figure in the history of Hollywood. Here are the films that he's directed. Young Guns 2, Under Siege 2, Dark Territory. Love it when a guy has only made the sequels to films, you know, that he's not brought in for the original and then also he worked second unit on all the lord of the rings movies a new zealand legend this guy was like in his 70s in the working second unit on lord of the rings absolute icon

um okay great pick free jack also available on hbo max which is wonderful my next film uh we already mentioned we mentioned a very important lady named Natasha Henstridge. She was the heretofore unseen star of a film from 1995 called Species. Let me tell you something. If you thought I was excited to see Stargate in 1994,

you can't begin to imagine how excited I was to see Species in 1995. Holy shit. This movie was released in july of that year i believe this was my birthday movie is michael matson in this movie he certainly is i believe he plays a police officer um this film also stars uh beloved screen actors ben kingsley forrest whitaker, and Alfred Molina. Unreal. It's unreal what they do. You know?

The premise of this movie is a motley crew of scientists and government agents are trying to track down Sill, a seductive extraterrestrial human hybrid, before she successfully mates with a human male. So this movie is just all about Natasha Henstridge's sill trying to fuck guys so that they can

take over the planet with their hybrid babies. And I'm going to tell you, it's been a while since I've seen this, but I don't remember, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think Michael Madsen had the same level of commitment to this material as he might have to Reservoir Dogs. He's a little checked out. I think it's fair to say. Not checked out, however, is H.R. Giger, who created the creatures for this film. This is a dope movie. This movie is sick. I actually don't know where it's streaming right now. Is it streaming anywhere? It was released by MGM back in the day. It was a

big hit. Small movie, big hit. It was a cultural force in my high school. Let me tell you. A lot of young men were very excited about the forthcoming career of Natasha Henstridge. Species also went on to become a franchise.

There were a bunch of movies that came after it. This movie was directed by Roger Donaldson who is probably best known for the Kevin Costner movie No Way Out. He's made a couple of cool movies

over the years. He's also a New Zealander. What's up with the New Zealanders and the junk sci-fi? I think they just have really cool lives where they live in a beautiful place and they can imagine terrible things happening in space because it's so chill there.

Let's talk about 1987 through 1997 for Roger Donaldson quickly, okay? Here's his filmography, No Way Out. Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young. Tremendous film. 1988, Cocktail. Yeah, re, Gene Hackman, Sean Young. Tremendous film. 1988, Cocktail. Yeah,

a rewatchable. We've done that. One of the funniest episodes we've done. 1990, Cadillac Man. Robin Williams, Tim Robbins.

Pretty solid comedy. 1992, White Sands. Never seen it. Willem Dafoe, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. It's a serious film. 1994,

a remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway. Yeah, Alec Baldwin and Kim Baszler. That's right. Then Species, then Dante's Peak. He capped it all off.

Pierce Brosnan conquers a volcano. These guys, they were having the times of their lives in the 90s. What have we lost? Hollywood has lost the plot. Because these guys are now like, you have to wait six years for Doctor Strange to come out to introduce this one fucking guy, and then you can make a movie just 25 scant years ago we were like let's put pierce brosnan and linda hamilton at the top of dante's peak and see if they can get down from that shit

oh man we're so lost anyway what's next on your list i don't want you guys to think that the garbage sci-fi genre is dead. So I wanted to throw a couple of more recent examples in my list. Number four for me here is Underwater, a film that came out, I think, just two years ago, right? Correct. It stars Kristen Stewart, Academy Award nominee Kristen Stewart. Yeah.

What's your Spencer take, by the way? You seen that film? You know what? She's way better in Underwater. No shots. Underwater is like one of my favorite. This and Happiest Season are like, these are the Kristen Stewart's that I want to hang out with.

And she's just basically doing Sigourney Weaver in this movie. She works on an underwater exploration science station. Her captain is Vincent Cassell. There's a disaster at this underwater station and they have to basically put on wetsuits, diving suits,

and get across the floor of the ocean. They're eight miles below the surface. And then there's a little bit of sci-fi involved that comes into it. She's fucking great. William Eubanks is just doing the particles of water. There's a lot of 4K photography stuff going on, but is essentially moving things along. And I think that the danger for a movie like this would be to take itself too seriously.

And you have TJ Miller there to make jokes and keep things light. But Kristen Stewart actually does not belabor this. She's a badass in this movie and i just thought like this was a really good example of more recent garbage sci-fi fare i remember being a little bit confused as to why she made this movie given what that she'd been making the clouds of sills maria you know like a personal shopper and shit yeah but then i remembered she did make the weird snow white movie you know and that she does she likes to keep one toe in genre. She's not just an artiste. She's for the people.

And I hope Spencer doesn't steer her away from this sort of thing. She actually does a pretty decent, really good job doing a lot of physical stuff in this movie. Definitely. Yeah. So I love this. Do you think that William Eubank's previous film, The Signal, is junk sci-fi? That's, it's, honestly, it might be too good.

Could be, right? Yeah. What's happening for Eubank next? Does he have anything else coming? He just did Paranormal Activity, bro. That one we loved. Oh my God. He did Next of Kin?

Yeah. Oh. Wow, Next of Kin was good. Yeah. Underrated. Probably not talked about enough. Okay, great pick. Eubank, come Yeah. Oh, wow. Next of Kin was good. Yeah. Underrated. Probably not talked about enough. Okay, great pick. Come on the pod, man.

Seriously, come through. William Eubank. All right, my number five, my final film is probably the movie I've watched the most with my brother Kyle in my life. This movie was on HBO constantly when we were growing up and i think it's debatable whether it could be considered as part of the junk sci-fi genre but i think it pairs

very well with one of your picks so i want to open up a a broader michael crichton conversation sure michael crichton of course the author of Jurassic Park and the Andromeda Strain and Westworld and a number of other the Great Train Robbery he directed that film yeah and he also wrote a book in the 90s called Congo this is a movie about

intelligent apes and the search for a lost city it fuses I think some of the technophobia and Jeff Bezos, like billionaire power struggles with ancient history, with anthropology, with zoology, and with an incredibly gifted cast of people being asked to say,

it's just unbelievable to watch Laura Linney have to do this movie. Or just obviously willingly do this movie, but she's Laura Linney, and she's acting with a gorilla. I believe Laura Linney plays the daughter of an extremely rich person who is also a former CIA agent. Is that possible? Yeah. And she encounters a primatologist

who is working with a gorilla who can communicate with humans. And it is just... This movie in the final hour goes to... This movie is considered one of the worst movies ever made when it was released. I deeply disagree with that. It was directed by the great

Frank Marshall, the producer of many George Lucas projects and Steven Spielberg projects to kathleen kennedy who oversees lucasfilm recently just made the bgs documentary um i don't i know why people thought this movie was bad they were all wrong this is one of the most entertaining batshit movies of the 1990s and it is entirely worth it for the laser beam shootout amongst the gorillas in the final 10 minutes. It goes to some pretty sweet places.

That's all I'm going to say. I'll throw just, this isn't actually the last movie I want to talk about, but because it's Crichton, Crichton's the lord of the premise. And then just like nothing gets followed through on.

It's just like dinosaurs, they're back, let's go. Cut the check. I like Sphere, I think counts as garbage sci-fi. Absolutely. Sphere's just like dinosaurs, they're back. Let's go. Cut the check. I like Sphere, I think counts as garbage sci-fi. Absolutely. Sphere is just like, there's a sphere and Dustin Hoffman and Ginger for Casino are going to it. You know, like it's just unreal.

One word, titles, simple premises, overqualified actors. Tim Curry having a conversation with Delroy Lindo in this movie Tim Curry plays Herkimer Hamolka who's a Romanian treasure hunter

and criminal and Delroy Lindo plays Captain Wanta who's a corrupt Ugandan military officer the phrase stop eating my sesame cake which Delroy Lindo

delivers magnificently in this movie I would say Kyle and I shared with each other north of 500 times we would be sitting eating my sesame cake, which Delroy Lindo delivers magnificently in this movie. I would say Kyle and I shared with each other north of 500 times. We would be sitting at the dinner table and every night

we would be like, stop eating my sesame cake. This is a secret language between us. My mother was baffled as to what the hell we were talking about. This is amazing.

Congo is sick. I love Congo so much. Okay. You got one more? Two more? I got one more. I mean, we can throw a couple more honorable mentions out there. I want to mention pandorum which is the other

movie that i kind of thought of when i was like it's time for us to do garbage sci-fi i've never seen this one this is dope so this came out in 2009 okay directed by uh christian alvart uh and it was produced by paul ws anderson of Oh, of course. It's basically about a fictional slang term. This is from the Wikipedia entry. It's just easier to do it this way. The film's title is a fictional slang term for a form of psychosis called orbital dysfunctional syndrome caused by deep space and triggered by emotional stress. So essentially, Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster wake up from deep sleep.

And they have amnesia. They don't know why they're in space. They don't know why they've been woken up. They don't know what their jobs are. And they're starting to just try to figure out what's going on in this spaceship. That they were A, woken up. Who's in command. What they're supposed to be doing and

it's basically like for the first half of it um and it's kind of like rope or something where these guys are just like very suspicious of one another and trying to interrogate one another about like why they're awake in space and then the second half of it is just like there's fucking aliens man we gotta we gotta fight

these things so it's it's like a really really really cool essentially two-hander second half of it is just like, there's fucking aliens, man. We got to fight these things. So it's like a really, really, really cool, essentially two-hander for most of it. There's some other people who turn up, but I just love the premise. And it's really gnarly. It's very dark. It's kind of gothic. And it has a little bit of that Paul W.S. Anderson vibe to it.

But Quaid and Foster are just both the safeties off, and they're just hamming it up with each other. It's so cool. Chris, I have incredible news for the listeners of this show. The film Pandorum is streaming for free on Tubi right now. Tubi? You know what Tubi does is when you type in a movie name and streaming, it's always like it's on Tubi for free. That's why their fucking numbers are high. They are crushing right now when it comes to low-grade, ill-remembered,

decent genre movies from the last 35 years. I can't believe it. There's nothing like it. Oh, the twist on Pandorum too is it opens with these guys finding out that Earth is in crisis. So when they wake up, they get a message from earth and

it's like you guys are our last hope but they don't even know what they're supposed to be doing what like a message from earth what is like from the planet they actually communicate the planet communicates yeah like like they get a message from like home base back on earth oh like an emissary you gotta come through for us and they're like what the fuck wow i gotta check that one out great recommendation what any other films you feel like we haven't had a chance to hit on or that are an important part of this? So like I mentioned before, Predators is a very good sci-fi setup. I just love Predators because of the cast and the characters. If I could run through those really quickly, because this is a movie that I'm like, I can't believe I got to see this.

I can't believe this was something we got to experience. Robert Rodriguez produced this one. It features Adrian this was something we got to experience. Robert Rodriguez produced this one. It features Adrian Burry as a US special ops guy. Alice Braga plays an Israeli sniper. Topher Grace as a doctor. Walton Goggins as a death row

inmate. A Russian commando. A Yakuza enforcer. Mahershala Ali as a Sierra Leone soldier, and Danny Trejo as a cartel hitman, and they get dropped on a planet to fight predators. This movie is amazing. We didn't know how good we had it.

Also, Lawrence Fishburne is the secret MVP of this whole genre. He is so unafraid. Fishburne is the secret MVP of this whole genre. Yeah. He is so unafraid. Fishburne and Henstridge. First of all, what an incredible, beautiful couple and series of offspring they could create if they wanted to. But Fishburne will just do it. He doesn't give a fuck.

Like with The Matrix, do you think he knew that it was going to be good? He's probably just like, this might as well be Event Horizon 2. You know, like he doesn't. It's wonderful how willing. A bunch of other movies that i think fall into this delineation that we didn't talk about that you know i think some of them work some of them don't johnny mnemonic really jumps out to me as like a precursor to the matrix and a movie that is based on beloved source material but is like a pretty mediocre adaptation judge dread also feels like another one that could have been better i I'm talking about the Stallone version of Judge Dredd. What else is on the list here?

I think it's important to shout out one of the great actors of the genre is Peter Weller. He was in a movie called Screamers, which is like, they're like on a desert planet. I think, are they on Mars? I can't remember, but like, it's basically like underground burrowing robots that blow up your brain. Yes, it's a distant mining planet is what it's described as. Uh, you mentioned Jean-Claude Van Damme.

I think time cop obviously is a significant entrant in this entire genre. You know, I think in some cases it's not just about the story because the original planet of the apes films from the seventies and the sixties predate star wars. So they're not eligible here. The Matt Reeves edition, the bad robot version of Planet of the Apes movies,

I think are too good, candidly. Probably have too many good ideas. The execution is too high. But the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes is hardcore junk sci-fi. This is trash sci-fi. More trash than sci-fi.

Okay. The only other couple that I was going to mention there's another Peter Weller movie called Leviathan which would be my second that's the underwater movie I would

go with if I wasn't going with underwater that's basically there's a monster at the bottom of the ocean also did you ever see supernova oh yeah sure the famous Walter Hill sci-fi movie

that Francis Coppola went and recut to try and save I have actually seen that it's James Spader and Angela Bassett yeah yeah yeah okay Francis Coppola went and recut to try and save. Have I actually seen that? It's James Spader and Angela Bassett. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I don't know if I've actually seen this. Was it any good? It's kind of like Event Horizon, but they basically took it away from Walter Hill. He finished shooting it and then they screened it without any visual effects, which is tough for a sci-fi movie and the people hated it. So they were like, we got gotta take this away from you. Walter Hill was like, what the fuck? And then somehow wound up getting Francis Coppola

involved to re-edit it. Great news, Chris. This film is also streaming on HBO Max right now. I have a lot of homework. This is delightful. This is gonna be one of the great You Guys Forgot This episodes, but we welcome it. We welcome all recommendations. Definitely just at AK Dobbins

with any of the films that you want us to check out. She will happily send that information directly over to us. CR, any closing thoughts here on Junk Sci-Fi? We finally did it, man. It's been 16 months. We did it. I feel like we really, I actually do want to ask Bobby. Like, Bobby, do you understand what we're talking about?

Does this make sense? I do. Okay. Bobby just Like, Bobby, do you understand what we're talking about? Does this make sense? I do. Okay. Bobby just replied. Bobby is not on mic. He refuses to engage CR on this issue. Okay. The word junk helps, he said.

Okay, well, we'll work on including more adjectives in our descriptions. Bobby, just like, I appreciate the offer to get freejacked. You know, I pinched my shoulder last time I played golf, so I feel like I could really use a younger man's frame.

Well, Chris and I are dying slowly but Bobby is thriving thanks to him for his work on this episode of the big picture really appreciate that next week on this show we have an old friend an old friend of both Chris and mine Chuck Klosterman Chuck's got a book called the 90s out in the world big parts

of that book are about movies and what movies meant to our culture back then, and maybe a little bit about what they meant to guys like Chris and I. So should have a good long conversation with him and please tune into that and we'll see you then. Thank you.