The Podcast Is Back in Action!

Great news - the podcast is back on iTunes. We'll have a new episode up for you guys ASAP, but until then, get caught up on back episodes here.

Site News

If you haven't noticed, the podcast is down for the time being. We're having to switch the podcast over to a new feed on iTunes so you can still access all our old episodes while we keep plugging away on written material here.

In the meantime, enjoy our written rants while we work on technical difficulties so you can listen to us rant again in the near future.

Thanks for reading! --Beth and Louise

The Cronenberg Crawl: Beth Watches Oeuvres from the King of Body Horror Until She is Blinded/Driven Insane

In our quest to plunge through the canon of some of the most celebrated and popular directors today, twisted sister Beth has been in a contest with herself to see how many David Cronenberg movies she can watch and review in one summer. Whether or not she can complete this task without suffering permanent brain damage or attracting the attention of terrorist watch groups remains to be seen.

For the uninitiated: who is David Cronenberg? This creepy son of a bitch is a Canadian director who, according to his gushing IMDB page, is also known as the "King of Venereal Horror" and the "Baron of Blood." We here at Beth and Louise Hate Movies don't know how many people have to call you the "Baron of Blood" until it is officially one of your epithets, but there you are. After a promising start in cult horror films in the late 70's (Rabid and They Came from Within), he moved on to bigger and better head explosions with more mainstream movies like Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and The Fly.

"But Beth and Louise," you might be saying, "why would you watch every movie made by a man who was famous for producing hideous cult movies?" Because we're terrible people, that's why. But more importantly, because you might know David Cronenberg from some of the OA History of Violence (2005), Eastern Promises (2007), A Dangerous Method (2011) and Cosmopolis (2012).
scar bait that he's made in recent years. From the mid to late 80's until now, Cronenberg's films have fared quite well at Cannes and Berlin and have picked up a number of Oscar nominations. You might know him from his more recent productions, such as

So there you are. Like Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, Cronenberg has followed a well-worn path from sordid B-cinema to mainstream glory, and has somehow never stopped giving everyone the willies every time he switches on a camera.

We have personally had an eye on Cronenberg ever since we stumbled across The Fly in high school (that makes for one hell of a gnarly popcorn movie, if you're interested), so we're proud to say that Beth will embrace this coming exercise with appropriate masochism and aplomb. You may not want to hang out with her when this is over, though. Stay tuned.

Keep smiling, Beth, you creepy freak.

We Were Just Thinking that the Internet Needed Some More Angry Embittered Opinions

If Rottentomatoes.com can be trusted, the general consensus among Americans today is that most movies, as a rule, suck. It is late July, 2013. It has been a notable summer in the eyes of many entertainment writers, not because the movies that came out in the summer of 2013 were absolutely terrible (that comes standard), but because the absolutely terrible movies didn't make a ton of money (this part is surprising). 2013, say many movie critics, has been the year of the apocalyptic destruction movie. Films like Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Man of Steel, and Pacific Rim have all trundled into theaters featuring constipated run times and extended sequences of ruin and chaos. Cities are leveled, heroes and villains fistfight in midair, giant robots swing battleships like swords (thanks for that, Pacific Rim), and waste is laid in excess across the computer-generated cities of the U.S. and beyond.

This has been the summer of the loud, megabudget blockbuster, say the critics.

Which caused us, Beth and Louise, to look back at 2012 (The Avengers, Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises) and say, "Hang on, wasn't that last summer, too?"

Christmas is no less repetitive. In the race to scoop up Oscars with Hollywood's proven formulas, the slated releases in December often look like the regurgitated, reanimated pieces of whatever made money and won awards in the years before. There are your period pieces, your maudlin dramas, your movie musicals, your classy versions of summer blockbusters (seriously, how did Avatar get nominated for Best Picture?), your quirky comedies, and your third-rate book adaptations. You read for months about the excitement and interest surrounding a certain picture, you see the trailers on TV and think it looks worthwhile, you scrape together whatever they're charging you to go to the cinema these days, you go and watch the damn thing for two and a half friggin hours, and you leave, disappointed. You are always disappointed. Slumdog Millionaire lost its way in the second half. The Hurt Locker felt unfocused and muddy. Crash had as many improbable plot twists as Lost (except, to be fair, Crash came out in the summer), and The King's Speech was polite and pleasant but nothing to tell your friends about. It's an unlikely occurrence that the winner of Best Picture is the most outstanding film of the year. More often that not, it's a Best Picture, but not a great film.

And of course spring and fall are where the really ill-conceived pictures go to die.

So why do we bother? Every year we, Beth and Louise, see dozens of movies. We watch them together and we watch them alone. We go to matinees and midnight releases. We bike to the Redbox and stream them on our laptops. We devour Netflix television series and salivate over upcoming releases. We watch trailers. We read reviews. We read the reports from film festivals. We call each other and talk about everything we've seen and everything we're going to see.

Why? We're obsessed.

Because for every twenty films you see and detest, for every dozen you swear you'll never watch again,  for every movie you warn your friends to never, ever, ever spend a minute or sent on, you see one that makes it all worthwhile. Those are the movies that keep you coming back for more. And if you aren't willing to suck it up and sift through the garbage, you never know what treasures you might miss.

We are here to take a little guesswork out of the crapshoot of cinema. We watch movies, we research directors, we pick apart genres, and we write about them. If we find something great, we'll tell you, and when we find stuff to avoid, we'll also let you know. Don't worry. We'll take the cinematic bullets for you. We'll let you know when a Smurfs 2 or a Sucker Punch comes out. We've got you covered.

We're Beth and Louise. We hate movies.