The Every Movie Ever! Podcast

This week, Ben and Rob thaw out Demolition Man (1993), Marco Brambilla’s gleefully absurd action satire, starring Sylvester Stallone as the 1990s cop defrosted into a future where almost everything fun is policed, Wesley Snipes as the villain who is out destroy him, and Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne and Denis Leary along for the ride.How did a no-jokes cop thriller by Peter M. Lenkov and Robert Reneau become a comic dystopia once Daniel Waters, the writer of Heathers, got his hands on it? How did the film get made with a first-time director from commercials, Lori Petty fired two days in, a shoot that ran to about 112 days against 75 planned, and a budget that no two sources can agree on? Why did Taco Bell turn into Pizza Hut overseas, and what are the three seashells for? And did it really predict the future, or are we all just finding our own politics in a very silly action movie?And finally... what does it really mean?!We have ad free audio AND video episodes up on our patreon! Also a bunch of exclusive bonus content! Feel free to head over there and help support the show, get yourself something extra too :)Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastLOVE YA!GET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

This week, Ben and Rob take a very detailed look at their business cards and the American Psycho (2000) revival of Mary Harron’s razor-sharp adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s notorious novel, starring Christian Bale as Wall Street’s most immaculately moisturised murderer, with Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon and Chloë Sevigny along for the ride.How much of the book’s relentless, stomach-churning brutality survived the journey to the screen, and why did Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner decide to play it as a satire? How did a film this divisive ever get made, with Lionsgate wanting a bigger star, Leonardo DiCaprio and Oliver Stone circling, and Harron briefly shown the door before Bale got her job back? And what about the men online who treat Patrick Bateman as an aspirational icon? Do they realise they’ve missed the joke entirely, and that he’s the most pathetic man in the room?And finally... what does it really mean?!We have ad free audio AND video episodes up on our patreon! Also a bunch of exclusive bonus content! Feel free to head over there and help support the show, get yourself something extra too :)Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastLOVE YA!GET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

Ben and Rob head into the Argentine countryside for When Evil Lurks (Cuando acecha la maldad), the 2023 possession horror from Terrified director Demián Rugna that became Shudder’s first Spanish-language original. Brothers Pedro and Jimmy, played by Ezequiel Rodríguez and Demián Salomón, find a half-eviscerated corpse and a man about to give birth to a demon. Their botched attempt to deal with it sets off a contagion that spreads across the region, in a story where faith offers no protection and the rules of the exorcism film have been thrown out.What real-world nightmare did Rugna say sparked the script, and how does a film about rotting, contaminated land mirror a country that sees the horror coming and does nothing about it? How did he turn a tiny Argentine budget into a daylight road movie, and was he really channelling Evil Dead, The Wailing and The Road? Why is the script so brutal and so hard to second-guess, with an opening that drops us into a world already ruined and refuses to hold our hand? How did that dog scene get filmed? And why did a film this uncompromising sweep Sitges, the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards and a cult following? And finally… what does it really mean?!We have ad free audio AND video episodes up on our patreon! Also a bunch of exclusive bonus content! Feel free to head over there and help support the show, get yourself something extra too :)Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastLOVE YA!GET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

Ben and Rob step into Trainspotting, the 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel that sent Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald out of the Shallow Grave sandpit and into the scuzzy flats, pubs and shooting galleries of Edinburgh’s heroin underworld. The film follows Mark “Rent Boy” Renton, played by Ewan McGregor, as he tries to kick the habit, fails, tries again, and drags his mates through the wreckage: Jonny Lee Miller’s Sick Boy, Ewen Bremner’s Spud, Kevin McKidd’s Tommy, Kelly Macdonald’s Diane, Peter Mullan’s Swanney, and Robert Carlyle’s Begbie, the friend nobody wants to be in a pub with.What was Britain really like in 1996, a country caught between the hangover of Thatcherism and the glossy optimism of Cool Britannia? How did Boyle and his team turn a book many considered unfilmable into a £1.5 million sensation, and did they really shoot an Edinburgh story in Glasgow? How do you cast a group of near-unknowns, and how did Kelly Macdonald, who had never acted before, end up on screen opposite them? Why did a film accused of glamorising heroin become one of the most celebrated British movies ever made, and what did Underworld, Iggy Pop and the soundtrack have to do with it? And why does that “Choose life” monologue still hit so hard, thirty years on?And finally… what does it really mean?!We have ad free audio AND video episodes up on our patreon! Also a bunch of exclusive bonus content! Feel free to head over there and help support the show, get yourself something extra too :)Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastLOVE YA!GET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

Ben and Rob step into Sunshine, the 2007 sci-fi thriller that sent Danny Boyle and his 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland out of the zombie-infested UK and into the dying heart of our solar system. The film follows the crew of the Icarus II, an international band of astronauts played by Cillian Murphy as quiet physicist Capa, Chris Evans as the most sensible man on board, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong and Cliff Curtis, as they haul a bomb the size of Manhattan towards the sun in a last-ditch attempt to reignite it, with Mark Strong waiting out in the dark as a man who really, really should not have survived.How do you make a cast of actors believe they’re physicists, and did sending Cillian Murphy to CERN with Brian Cox actually work? What was the Boyle and Garland disagreement that left one of cinema’s great writer-director partnerships on ice for years? What on earth possessed Danny Boyle to go on Richard and Judy and say what he said about the ending? Why did a film this gorgeous, with a cast this good, quietly vanish at the box office? And is there something almost too perfect about a film that spends two acts as hard science fiction and then lurches into slasher territory, a third act people have been arguing about ever since: a catastrophic collapse, or the whole point?And finally… what does it really mean?!

Ben and Rob set sail for Waterworld, Kevin Reynolds' 1995 post-apocalyptic epic that turned a five-million-dollar B-movie idea into the most expensive film ever made at the time, and one of Hollywood's most infamous cautionary tales. Directed by Reynolds and starring Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino and Dennis Hopper, the film follows a mutant drifter across a flooded Earth while, behind the scenes, an unfinished script, a gigantic floating city and two old friends with very different ideas of what movie they were making pushed the production towards complete industrial madness. How did Roger Corman rejecting a waterlogged Mad Max knock-off for being too expensive lead, somehow, to a $175 million studio blockbuster? Why did Kevin Costner and Kevin Reynolds agree to work together again after Robin Hood had already wrecked their friendship, and how did the exact same argument over creative control come back to destroy them twice? What happens when you decide the best way to suggest a floating city is to actually build one, chain it to the seabed and employ Lockheed Martin to help keep the bastard afloat? And after months of headlines branding it “Fishtar” and “Kevin’s Gate” before audiences had even seen it, was Waterworld really the catastrophic flop everyone remembers, or did the story of the disaster become bigger than the film itself?And finally… what does it really mean?!Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcast If you enjoyed the show and want more, head on over to Patreon and enjoy heaps of exclusive content there! LOVE YAGET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

Ben and Rob step into Howard the Duck, the 1986 sci-fi comedy that took George Lucas's decade long crush on a foul mouthed Marvel comic book duck and turned it into one of the most notorious box office disasters in Hollywood history. Directed by Willard Huyck from a screenplay he co-wrote with Gloria Katz, the film stars Lea Thompson as rock singer Beverly Switzler, Jeffrey Jones as a scientist possessed by an alien entity, and a young Tim Robbins as her hapless almost scientist friend, all sharing the screen with a wisecracking, cigar smoking duck played by a rotating cast of performers in animatronic suits.Why did Lucas and his American Graffiti collaborators originally want to make this thing as a cartoon, and what forced Universal to demand a live-action duck instead? How do you even get an audience to accept a romantic subplot between a human woman and a man in a rubber duck costume, and did anyone involved really think that would work? What happened on release that turned this into a punchline for years and got it nominated for Worst Picture of the Decade at the Razzies? And is there something almost too perfect about a movie starring an outsider who doesn't fit anywhere getting made by an industry that couldn't figure out where it fit either?And finally… what does it really mean?!Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastIf you enjoyed the show and want more, head on over to Patreon and enjoy heaps of exclusive content there! LOVE YAGET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

Ben and Rob step into Labyrinth, Jim Henson's 1986 fantasy adventure that turned a puppeteer's most personal creative risk into a genre-defining cult classic. Directed by Jim Henson from a screenplay credited to Monty Python's Terry Jones, the film stars David Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth and a fourteen year old Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, a girl who has thirteen hours to solve an ever-shifting maze and rescue her baby brother from Jareth's clutches.How did a limo ride home from a Dark Crystal screening turn into a story about goblins stealing babies, and why did the finished script pass through the hands of a Monty Python legend, a Fraggle Rock lyricist, and George Lucas before anyone was happy with it? What made David Bowie the obvious choice to play Jareth when Sting, Prince, and Michael Jackson were all in the running, and how much of the film's most memorable moments came down to pure, unscripted chemistry on set? Why did a film this ambitious flop so badly on release and what does it say that a story about a girl choosing to grow up came at the exact moment its director's own life was falling apart?And finally… what does it really mean?!Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastIf you enjoyed the show and want more, head on over to Patreon and enjoy heaps of exclusive content there! LOVE YAGET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

Ben and Rob head underground for Tremors, Ron Underwood's 1990 monster comedy that turned a killer-worm B-movie premise into one of the most beloved cult classics of the home-video era. Directed by Underwood in his feature debut, from a script by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, the film stars Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire (in her acting debut) as the residents of an isolated Nevada town who discover something enormous is hunting them from beneath the dirt.What did it actually take for two writers to get this thing made on their own terms, and where did an idea this strange even come from in the first place? What was going on in Kevin Bacon's career that made this the role he took and the one he'd spend years trying to distance himself from before changing his mind entirely? How much of what makes this monster still work comes down to old-fashioned, hands-on craft rather than anything flashy? And when the film itself keeps daring you to guess where these things came from, is that an open question worth taking seriously, or the whole point of the joke?And finally… what does it really mean?!Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastIf you enjoyed the show and want more, head on over to Patreon and enjoy heaps of exclusive content there! LOVE YAGET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!

Ben and Rob make a wish on a One Wish Willow and immediately regret it, joined this week by James Bertie for a deep dive into the low budget horror romance that somehow outgrossed Scream 7, Backrooms, and pretty much every other genre film released in 2026. Directed by Curry Barker and starring Michael Johnston as lovesick Bear and Inde Navarrette as his increasingly ominous crush-turned-obsession Nikki (with able comic backup from Andy Richter), Obsession is the story of a Faustian bargain gone spectacularly, hilariously wrong.The trio dig into how Barker builds dread on a shoestring, the slow burn tension of Nikki's increasingly unsettling attempts at being romantic, while somehow keeping the film laced with genuine, quotable comedy throughout. They trace Bear and Nikki's character arcs from meet cute to nightmare fuel, unpack what the film is actually saying about obsession, wish fulfillment, and modern romance under the hood of all that supernatural mayhem, and go behind the scenes on the low budget, high ingenuity making of a movie nobody saw coming.James Bertie is one of our favourite people, he's a very talented comedian and a lovely, wholesome fella to boot, please go and show him some love here: https://www.instagram.com/mrjamesbertie/ <3PLUS we have a Patreon with EXCLUSIVE content just for you starting at less than £2 a month! Click the link below!Find us on your socials of choice at www.linktr.ee/everymovieeverpodcastGET 20% OFF CINEWORLD UNLIMITED MEMBERSHIP WITH DISCOUNT CODE: ' TEL013 ' You're Welcome!