Latest Mildly Podcast Episodes

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The Pick: eXistenZ

Mildly Pleased - April 11, 2024 01:15 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
This week on The Pick, we’re going back to the ’90s (again) and back to David Cronenberg (again) by taking a look at 1999’s eXistenZ (which is not pronounced how you’d think). Yet, despite the familiarity inherent in this episode’s Pick, it’s far from a run-of-the-mill movie, even if it does feel...

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The Pick: Cabin Boy

Mildly Pleased - March 27, 2024 00:41 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
We are, once again, back. We’re also back on our bullshit reviewing a movie with a cult following and a strange cultural footprint that we’ve been meaning to get to the bottom of. In honor of its 30th anniversary, we’re taking a look at Cabin Boy, the first and only big-screen collaboration betwe...

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Most Anticipated Movies of 2024

Mildly Pleased - February 05, 2024 23:11 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
After a bizarre year for cinema, we set our sights on… possibly another bizarre year for cinema. That’s right, we’re doing our annual look ahead to our most anticipated (and least anticipated movies) of the new year. In 2024, superhero movies seem to be out (unless you’re talking about our least ...

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The Twelfth Annual Mildly Pleased Awards

Mildly Pleased - January 08, 2024 08:01 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
Just when you thought 2023 was over, we’re here to take a slightly belated look back at the year that was. Kicking things off before we get into posting our Top Tens of 2023 over on Mildly Pleased is, of course, the award show that bears the site’s name. We’re talking about awarding the “good […]

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The Pick: The Preacher’s Wife

Mildly Pleased - December 20, 2023 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
Every time an underrated Christmas movie is acknowledged, an angel gets its wings. Or at least, that’s what we’d like to think after talking about The Preacher’s Wife, a Christmas movie that we enjoyed quite a bit despite it not being one of the big holiday movies everybody watches this time of y...

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The Pick: Notting Hill

Mildly Pleased - December 05, 2023 18:30 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
We’re back in romantic comedyland, looking once again at Richard Curtis’s wish-fulfillment shenanigans (and another Julia Roberts movie) with a discussion of 1999’s Notting Hill. Even though we split on this one, it’s a fairly cordial conversation full of British accents and debate over the charm...

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The Pick: The Pelican Brief

Mildly Pleased - November 28, 2023 04:10 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
Needless to say, the gap between this latest and our last episode hasn’t been all that… brief. It wasn’t helped by the fact that The Pelican Brief is an overwhelming passable but unremarkable film, and one that pales a bit compared to some of the other John Grisham adaptations that were filling m...

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The Pick: Wolf

Mildly Pleased - October 28, 2023 03:03 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
We end this Shocktober (for the most part) with a movie that’s hard to even categorize as a horror movie, even if it tackles one of the most iconic movie monsters. 1994’s Wolf sees the odd pairing of Mike Nichols’ actor-centric directing with modern-day werewolves and the results are… pretty fun ...

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The Pick: Cat People

Mildly Pleased - October 08, 2023 14:18 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
As we make our way through Shocktober, this week we take a look at a horror movie of sorts (or perhaps an “erotic fantasy”) with the 1982 remake of Cat People. We discuss how effectively the film expands on its horror-noir inspiration and whether director Paul Schrader was the best person to brin...

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The Pick: Blue Thunder

Mildly Pleased - September 27, 2023 21:44 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
We’re rollin’ in with another episode of The Pick, this one aimed at the helicopter-fueled action flick Blue Thunder from 1983. We discuss pretty much every aspect of its modest cultural imprint, including its short-lived TV adaptation, as well as our fondness for its stars, Roy Scheider and John...

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The Pick: Mystery Men

Mildly Pleased - September 15, 2023 07:01 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
After our usual summer break, The Pick is back with another batch of episodes that we kick off with 1999’s Mystery Men. What started as an intended tribute to the late Paul Reubens also ended up being a tribute to Smash Mouth frontman Steve Harwell, who also passed away before we recorded this ep...

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The Seventh Annual Criterion Month Draft

Mildly Pleased - June 27, 2023 02:17 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
It’s that time of year again, when we take a break from the many blockbusters crowding our theaters and take a look back at cinema’s past and all of its various artistic triumphs and oddities. This year, Sean tries to power through some of his Criterion box sets, John picks some Tarantino favs as...

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The Pick: Mamma Mia!/Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

Mildly Pleased - June 14, 2023 19:13 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
Since this will be our last episode of The Pick for a little while, it’s overstuffed with plenty to keep you satisfied as we set our sights on Criterion Month. Not only do we review both 2008’s Mamma Mia! and its questionable yet miraculous sequel, we also sneak in a mini-review of Fast X, which […]

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The Pick: Boiler Room

Mildly Pleased - May 26, 2023 12:54 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
With Fast X currently in theaters, we’re taking a look back at Vin Diesel’s early career, back when he wasn’t exclusively racing cars and being Groot in movies. However, what we didn’t expect when picking Boiler Room was that we’d actually be getting a whole lot of Giovanni Ribisi, which was just...

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The Pick: 42

Mildly Pleased - May 15, 2023 07:01 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
This week we’re talkin’ baseball in honor of the plethora of sports going on now by taking a look at a movie celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, 42. It’s a movie that’s plenty likable but probably could’ve been better if it had been put in the hands of a director more distinct than Hollyw...

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The Pick: Willard (2003)

Mildly Pleased - May 02, 2023 16:17 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
If for some reason you’re looking for real sickos content, then look no further than our discussion of the 2003 remake of the furry horror flick Willard. It’s perhaps the most divided response the three of us have had to a movie reviewed on The Pick, since one of us liked the movie quite a […]

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The Pick: Three Thousand Years of Longing

Mildly Pleased - April 21, 2023 07:01 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
Your wish is our command! Assuming your wish was for us to record a somewhat delayed review of an 8-month-old movie that not enough people saw in theaters. This week we’re talking about George Miller’s strange and sultry follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road while also providing a brief history of djin...

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The Pick: Super Mario Bros.

Mildly Pleased - April 05, 2023 21:21 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
After our usual end-of-the-year and Oscar-induced break, we’re back with another season of The Pick! On the eve of a new Mario movie coming out this week, we take a look back at the first time Hollywood attempted to bring this massively popular but hard-to-adapt property to the big screen. So far...

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Most Anticipated Movies of 2023

Mildly Pleased - January 30, 2023 08:01 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
After looking backing at 2022, we finally turn our eyes to the future. While the film industry is still in somewhat of a weird place, there is still plenty to be excited about for the coming year in film. Well, there’s also plenty to be a less excited about as well, since there is (as […]

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The Eleventh Annual Mildly Pleased Awards

Mildly Pleased - January 18, 2023 00:08 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
For the first time in what feels like a while, the year preceding our new one doesn’t feel like it would be entirely painful to revisit. In fact, it could be a mildly pleasing endeavor. That’s why we’re once again looking back at the year in things that were good but not great. Whether it […]

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The Pick: Avatar: The Way of Water

Mildly Pleased - December 24, 2022 05:08 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
We just couldn’t close out this year on Mildly Pleased or The Pick without getting wet and wild while learning the way of water. It’s a super-sized episode for a super-sized film, which includes a journey through the life and career of James Cameron and how he ended up at such an award-winning an...

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The Pick: Reindeer Games

Mildly Pleased - December 16, 2022 21:24 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
We three kings bring curiosity for Ben Affleck’s early stardom on this holiday installment of The Pick. The episode is a dive into the year 2000’s somewhat forgotten Reindeer Games, the last film directed by John Frankenheimer and the first to ask what would happen if a bunch of incompetent crimi...

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The Pick: The Money Pit

Mildly Pleased - December 02, 2022 17:56 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
This episode took us a little while to record, since our own Sean Lemme was busy moving into a new house, not unlike Tom Hanks and Shelley Duvall in this episode’s film, albeit with less destruction. As our lone Hanks-giving pick this year (if you can even call it that considering it’s December),...

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The Pick: The Addams Family

Mildly Pleased - October 28, 2022 19:27 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
With spooky season coming to a close, we spend some time in the residence of the ookiest of all families, The Addamses. We do this by first delving into the history of this fictional family that originated with Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoon that was turned into a TV show that has always seem...

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The Pick: Morbius

Mildly Pleased - October 09, 2022 14:24 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
This time on The Pick it is, unfortunately, morbin’ time. In the midst of Shocktober season, we dive into the recent film portrayal of one of the spookier superhero villains and live to regret it. This is quite possibly the worst movie we’ve reviewed so far on The Pick, but that doesn’t mean we d...

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The Pick: The Transformers: The Movie

Mildly Pleased - September 27, 2022 20:04 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
There wasn’t any specific tie-in or reason really for us to be talking about the 1986 animated Transformers movie, other than the fact that Sean and John bought the movie on blu-ray a while ago and have needed a reason to watch it. Regardless, it gives us an opportunity to talk about the history ...

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The Pick: In The Line of Fire

Mildly Pleased - September 13, 2022 00:44 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
After a summer break from podcasting, we’re back with The Pick to talk about one of the more acclaimed movies directed by the recently departed Wolfgang Peterson, 1993’s In The Line of Fire. It’s a movie that somehow we had all not seen until now and that despite being nearly 30 years old, featur...

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The Sixth Annual Criterion Month Draft

Mildly Pleased - June 20, 2022 07:01 - 2 hours ★★★★ - 5 ratings
With July less than two weeks away, it’s about time we draft our picks for Criterion Month once again. This is the annual podcast where the three of us take turns picking what movies from the Criterion Collection we’d like to review on this blog over the course of next month. Most years there are...

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The Pick: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Mildly Pleased - June 12, 2022 07:01 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
Since it is wedding season, we’re taking a look at the biggest, fattest, Greekest one the movies have ever seen. John’s got some bones to pick with this light and breezy romantic comedy, while also marveling at the fact that it was an absolute monster hit back in 2002. Also, since this is the end...

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The Pick: Jupiter Ascending

Mildly Pleased - May 31, 2022 15:55 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 5 ratings
This time around, we round out our trio of episodes looking at The Wachowskis’ misunderstood non-Matrix movies. We discuss why this one has had less of a cult following than Speed Racer or Cloud Atlas since its release, as well as why audiences didn’t connect with it at the time despite its effor...

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