‘Stranger Things: Tales From ’85’: Eric Robles On Expanding Hawkins, Keeping The Stakes Real, & Why This Isn’t Just ‘Stranger Things For Kids’ [Bingeworthy Podcast]

Director Damian McCarthy really loves to hit that dread button, and in “Hokum,” he absolutely wears that thing out. Not with loud shocks or cheap jolts, but with the kind of slow, creeping unease that just sits there, staring back at you. The longer you watch, the more it feels like the movie isn’t escalating so much as tightening, quietly, deliberately, until there’s nowhere left to go. Then he slaps you across the face for good measure.READ MORE: ’ Hokum’ Review: Adam Scott Is Haunted By A Hotel Full Of Scares, Death, & Secrets [SXSW]Written and directed by McCarthy, “Hokum” stars Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, and Austin Amelio. The film follows novelist Ohm Bauman, who retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, only to become consumed by stories of a witch tied to the hotel’s honeymoon suite. Disturbing visions and a sudden disappearance begin to fracture whatever control he has left, forcing him to confront a past that doesn’t stay buried.On this episode of The Discourse, McCarthy joins the podcast to break down how “Hokum” came together, why he stripped the story down rather than build it out, and how he balances supernatural horror with something far more immediate and human. The starting point was as simple as it gets.

Lots of action shows begin with some no-nonsense badass fully in charge of their faculties, but “Man On Fire” starts with a man who just plain isn’t. Before anything even happens in the story, Creasy is a suicidal, messy shell of his former peak CIA agent self. But, as with other iterations, that lack of stability is the hook. This isn’t "Reacher," and a muscular heroic soldier boy doesn't blow into town to set things right. "Man on Fire" is about a once-capable man on the brink of collapse forced into a heroic situation, which is far more emotionally compelling. The new Netflix series based on the A.J. Quinnell "Creasy" book series and the 2004 Tony Scott action film, revisits John Creasy, an ex-agent pulled back into danger to protect a young girl while dealing with emotional damage that doesn’t switch off just because the job demands it. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II takes on the role, and Steven Caple Jr. (“Creed II,” “Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts”) directs the first two episodes, setting a tone that stays rooted in character even as the scale expands.

When networks spin off popular series, it's easy to come at them with arms folded and write them off as cash grabs. A "Stranger Things" animated spin-off really could have failed. A version of this show exists, in another reality, as something like a Saturday morning cartoon with “Stranger Things” as a disguise: bright colors, low stakes, perhaps Dustin and a sweet monster learning to be friends. Luckily, “Stranger Things: Tales From ’85” appeared from a different portal.This version remembers that Hawkins is a town where children don't tell their parents the truth, quarrel with their friends, and then, from time to time, confront something that really shouldn't be there.The animated series is placed between the second and third seasons of "Stranger Things", fitting into that odd, in-between period when things should be calm. They aren't, though. Instead, the show manages to feel like a lost season that just happens to be animated - the same tension, the same complicated feelings, and the same sense that one poor choice is about to cause five even worse ones, along with some new mysteries.‘The Boys’ Season 5: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Karen Fukuhara, Jensen Ackles, Erin Moriarty, and Laz Alonso On Ending The Series, and Potential Spin-Offs [Bingeworthy Podcast]On this episode of Bingeworthy, host Mike DeAngelo is joined by showrunner Eric Robles to discuss entering the wider world of the Upside Down and finding ways to have fun with the characters and story without ruining them.

We’ve all probably been incredibly annoyed with our partner at one point or another, and thought (just for a second!) “I could kill them,” then went and made dinner as a perfectly functioning adult. The comedy thriller “Over Your Dead Body” from director Jorma Taccone (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” “Macgruber”) starring Jason Segel, Samara Weaving as the warring couple, asks what would happen if you didn’t let that thought go. What if you actually planned it… and it was a really, really awful plan?And that’s what the film is about. It’s not about professional killers or brilliant criminals. It’s about a couple in a relationship that’s on the rocks who think they are clever enough to get away with murder, and almost immediately show that they absolutely are not.What happens next isn’t a neat and tidy thriller. It’s more like a series of awful choices triggering each other, poorly thought-out plans, and doing things in a panic. The film’s style changes as it goes along, beginning as a sharply funny look at a failing relationship, becoming a farcical murder attempt, and then becoming far more chaotic than you’d anticipate.

Some films are just…films. Others feel as though a hugely skilled group of people were challenged to beautifully suffer in front of the camera. “Apex,” the new survival thriller on Netflix on April 24th, absolutely falls into that second category. It’s stark, pared-back, and wonderfully, not-so-slightly crazy. There are two people, a seriously awful predicament, and a huge number of bad choices about to be made. There’s no unnecessary explaining, no safety net, simply nature & some creepy guy slowly asserting dominance."Apex" is directed by Baltasar Kormákur, and is about two strangers (Charlize Theron & Taron Egerton) trapped in a brutal, increasingly desperate battle for survival across harsh land. It's deliberately simple, almost to an extreme. A Man hunts a woman. Both are pushed to their limits. Who comes out on top?!On this episode of The Discourse, Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Baltasar Kormákur talk about creating a film that, at times, sounds less like a typical film production and more like a carefully managed survival test. And “managed” might be overstating it, depending on who you ask.

The comedy “Balls Up” isn’t messing around. Yes, the title is a dick joke. The plot is a dick joke. And yes, the script is packed with dick jokes. It’s as immature and as dumb as they come, and yet, it oddly works because it just commits so hard and earnestly to the bit. Directed by Peter Farrelly—who knows a thing or two about immature, purile comedies with lots of dick jokes like “Dumb and Dumber,” “There’sSomething About Mary,” etc. — “Balls Up” does not ease you into its insanity. It sprints straight at you with it and keeps building, stacking absurdity on top of absurdity, until it becomes this weirdly impressive feat of endurance. And thanks to the sure hands of its director and stars, it somehow works.The film follows two condom marketing executives/salespeople, Brad (Mark Wahlberg) and Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser), who pitch a bold full‑coverage condom sponsorship with the World Cup. After their drunken antics in Brazil spark a global scandal, they must outrun furious fans, criminals, and power-hungry officials to salvage their careers and make it home alive.On this episode of The Discourse, Mike DeAngelo is joined by Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, and director Peter Farrelly (“Green Book”) to break down how you even begin to make a movie like this, why commitment is everything in comedy, and how something this dumb can actually be smart.

Bob Odenkirk playing a small-town interim sheriff squaring off against the Yakuza is not a sentence that should make sense, let alone sell a movie. It sounds like a dare, or the kind of idea you giggle at before moving on. And yet, “Normal” takes that slightly absurd premise and treats it with just enough sincerity, grit, and tonal whiplash to make you lean in instead of check out (read our review).The film, starring Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul,” “Nobody”) and written by Derek Kolstad— the screenwriting architect behind all the “John Wick” films— follows a small-town sheriff named Ulysses who finds himself pulled into a spiraling situation involving organized crime, buried history, and a small, quiet town that’s about to get a lot louder.READ MORE: ‘Balls Up’: Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser and Peter Farrelly Go All-In On R-Rated Chaos, ‘Transformers,’ ‘Resident Evil’, ‘I Play Rocky,’ Marvel and More [The Discourse Podcast]It works because “Normal” doesn’t behave like a single movie. It slyly shapeshifts. A dry, slightly offbeat character piece suddenly turns tense and violent, then veers into dark comedy, a thriller, and back again. The movie wants you to feel those shifts, to adjust in real time, preferably with a crowd that’s hooting and hollering right alongside you.

What made the first season of “Beef” so good is that it refused to shrug off a ridiculously small thing, a little bit of road rage. It didn't let that incident seem small. Instead, it became a complete and total falling apart for two people. They just kept making a conflict that should have ended in a parking lot get bigger and bigger, until it was uncomfortably, painfully true to life. It flourished in specifics, being both amusing, shockingly harsh, and really honest about how quickly people can lose it when they don't feel like anyone notices them.Season two of “Beef” pulls the same kind of nasty trick, but it begins with something incredibly simple & contained. A couple happens to witness something they shouldn't. They really ought to just walk away. They don't. They decide to use what they’ve seen, and that’s what launches Season 2 into pure petty chaos.

Adam McKay and Kevin Messick have spent the last decade-plus pinballing across genres with a kind of deliberate, morbid curiosity. One project dissects the financial system (“The Big Short”), another stares down extinction with a grin (“Don’t Look Up”), and another turns boardrooms into bloodsport (“Succession”). So no, a lean, camp-tinged shark thriller isn’t the obvious next stop. But “Thrash” feels less like a detour and more like the same thesis wearing a shark costume: what happens when systems strain, snap, and spill into chaos?On this episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo is joined by Adam McKay and Kevin Messick, the producers behind “Thrash,” a storm survival movie that starts in a recognizable climate-disaster lane and then, with a grin, tips over into something sharper, stranger, and a little meaner. The hook, at least at the start, is that balance between plausible and pulpy.

“Pizza Movie” locks onto a very dumb, very specific crisis and rides it for all it’s worth. After one terrible drug-based decision, the night keeps getting weirder, louder, and more desperate, with pizza becoming the only objective that matters. It keeps escalating without losing the thread, which is what makes it work. For all the bodily chaos and ridiculous panic, the movie understands something real about being that age: everything feels massive, nothing is in proportion, and sometimes your friends are the only reason the whole night doesn’t completely implode.Written and directed by Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, the film follows a group of college freshmen whose night turns surreal after they take a drug that will fry their brains without pizza. What begins as a quick trip two floors down spirals into sketch-comedy chaos with a genuine coming-of-age core. Led by Gaten Matarazzo, Lulu Wilson, and Sean Giambrone, the ensemble gives the film its heart. It earned a raucous standing ovation at SXSW.When the cast and filmmakers joined “The Discourse,” the chemistry clearly was not forced. They built it by hanging out, messing around, and growing into a believable unit.