Matt's Movie Lodgecast

We're taking a Lodgecast Spring Break! We must give our dear Lodgemaster a much-needed editing break after splicing together over 350 four-bone episodes in the last eight years! We'll be recording episodes of notable movies here and there while we rest up, but they won't be released until after our break. Fear not, dear listener; we shall return! Love & Eternal Light!

Celebrate Hollywood and the movies as the Lodgecast presents our Oscar Extravaganza & 2025 Movie Favorites! Host Brother Bischke leads a hard-charging examination of the Academy Award nominations as five prestigious Lodge members lay down their picks for what should win and what will win in twenty-four Oscar categories in under 30 minutes! Then it's onto our special award, where we'll all give our pick for The Salad Dragon of the Year! Then we charge forward to the very serious business of picking our 2025 movie favorites as we all count down from #10 to #1 of our very favorite films of 2025. Some Lodgecast movies make the cut of our best films, but there are many surprises. Have a listen, and let us know what you think!

85-year-old writer/director James L. Brooks returns with the political dramedy Ella McCay (2025). This movie bombed so hard that it was yanked from theaters before we could see it there, but we vowed to catch it on VOD, and we did! The film features an ensemble cast with Emma Mackey as Ella McCay, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani, Ayo Edebiri, Spike Fearn, Julie Kavner, Rebecca Hall, Albert Brooks, and Woody Harrelson. We dive deep into the world of Ella McCay in this episode, analyzing a mind-boggling script and so much more!

Have mercy! But there was no mercy shown when having to confront Mercy (2026) in IMAX! From desktop film auteur Timur Bekmambetov, Mercy (2026) features Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) sitting in a chair trying to prove to artificial intelligence Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) that he is innocent of murdering his own wife. He’s got 90 minutes to do so using all the bells and whistles of a desktop film, and the clock is ticking! He’s on FaceTime, he’s accessing emails and texts, he’s bringing up bodycam footage and security footage, he’s trying every technological trick in the book to prove he’s less than 92% guilty to avoid execution. Listen to our reactions as this hawt take definitely got heated up!

Prestige season is winding down, but not before we cover Park Chan-wook's highly anticipated black comedy thriller No Other Choice. Chan-wook has given us other cinematic gems like Oldboy (2003) and The Handmaiden (2016), so we were excited for his new offering. In No Other Choice, paper industry expert Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is fired from his job and has no other choice but to kill off his competition to keep his standard of living. The film stars Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, and Cha Seung-won. The film was snubbed by the Oscars, but is sure to make many of our 10 best lists in the forthcoming Oscar Lodgecast Extravaganza!

The 28 Days Later film series continues with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. This time, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Alex Garland. Coming right after 28 Years Later (2025), this film follows Ralph Fiennes and his Bone Temple. It also follows around Satanist "Sir Lord" Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell) and his Fingers gang, played by Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Emma Laird, Sam Locke, and more. Ralph Fiennes and the Fingers eventually clash for a wild ending. You'll hear where we render our bones in this Bone Temple hawt take!

The $75 million dollar Melania Trump documentary hit theaters this weekend, and we were there to witness it on opening night. In this emergency episode of the Lodgecast, we tell you all we encountered on the screen and in the Burbank 16 theater that projected this movie. This film takes place in the 20 days before Donald Trump's second presidential inauguration. We witnessed all 104 minutes and will tell you all of our observations in this special episode!

King Chalamet is back in Marty Supreme! This time as the fast-talking, super-confident ping pong player Marty Mauser. Safdie bro Josh wrote and directed this picture. It also stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A'zion, Kevin O'Leary, Tyler "the Creator" Okonma, Abel Ferrara, and Fran Drescher. The movie features an exceptional soundtrack of 80s music and synth score by Daniel Lopatin. Timothee Chalamet shines on the silver screen and may just get Oscar gold for his electric performance! We'll let you know what we thought of Timothee and everyone else in this prestigious hawt take!

No one has heard of the movie called Going Viral, but it features actor and musician Corey Feldman, so we watched it to give us an excuse to talk about all things Corey. Feldman holds a deep place in Lodge history, so most of this episode consists of our stories about Corey. We do briefly discuss Going Viral which has no stars except for Corey, and is not worth watching! But enjoy our recollections on the legend of Corey Feldman!

From the bestselling book by Freida McFadden comes the big screen adaptation of The Housemaid. This erotic psychological thriller is directed by Paul Feig (Bridesmaids). Sydney Sweeney shows up to become a live-in housekeeper for a wealthy couple played by Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar. As Seyfried's character begins acting crazy, we quickly learn that all is not what it seems. Critics and audiences were generally favorable, but we'll let you know what we thought in this episode, stacked with a minivan full of guests!

Avatar: Fire and Ash exploded into theaters this holiday season. Spider and the gang are back in James Cameron's third installment of the Avatar saga. We traveled to the tundra of Minnesota to join a special group of adventurers for this trip to Pandora. Jake Sully and Neytiri return, along with their family, battling RDA forces and a fiery Mangkwan tribe. The movie stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, Oona Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter) as Varang, and Jack Champion as Spider! With a 197-minute runtime, this is the longest Avatar yet, and we were all in! Take a trip with us to Pandora on this special Lodgecast episode!

Happy New Year! The Lodgemaster & Lodgemistress are back with another intimately Wicked episode! Will they love this epic conclusion to the popular musical tale, or will they rip it apart with tornados of scorn? You are but a clock tick away from finding out!

Merry Christmas! Our holiday special Lodgecast movie this year is Tyler Perry's Finding Joy. Tyler Perry has been churning out movies faster than we can cover them in the past few years. He wrote and directed 4 movies plus 40 episodes of TV in 2025! Finding Joy dropped onto Amazon Prime Video in November. It stars Shannon Thornton as Joy, along with Tosin Morohunfola, Brittany S. Hall, Inayah, and Aaron O'Connell. Joy is a fashion designer in New York City who travels to Colorado for the holidays only to discover an unlikely love interest in backwoodsman Ridge (Tosin Morohunfola). While this might not be Tyler Perry's finest movie, it left us with plenty to talk about in this holiday feast of a Lodgecast. We hope that you all find joy in the New Year!

Director Edgar Wright has remade The Running Man! The Richard Bachman (Stephen King) 1982 novel was set in a dystopian United States during the year 2025, so I guess this is the year to remake it. We talk about the superior adaptation from 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then we get into the new one starring Glen Powell. The cast of the new Running Man also features William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Sean Hayes, Colman Domingo, and Josh Brolin. Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards who goes on a dangerous network TV reality show to try to survive 30 days and possibly win $1 billion dollars. Now we live in a world where the mass media is in heavy decline and The Running Man seems like a satire of network television that is way outdated. And that's just one of the many criticisms we'll throw at this latest rendition of The Running Man!

Die My Love received a D+ CinemaScore, which pretty much made it a must-see for the Lodgecast! The movie is directed by Lynne Ramsay and based on a 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz. It stars Jennifer Lawrence as Grace, a young mother in rural Montana grappling with severe postpartum depression and psychosis that unravels her marriage to her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson). The supporting cast includes LaKeith Stanfield, Nick Nolte, and Sissy Spacek. We’ll give our thoughts on the cinema of Lynne Ramsay before we cover how this movie consistently beat us down for 2 hours. It’s a brutal film with a wild performance by Jennifer Lawrence and a miscast Robert Pattinson. We took the cinematic beating so you don’t have to! This is Die My Love!

Matt's Movie Lodgecast Episode Number 200 is upon us! For this, we picked the highly anticipated and prestigious film Bugonia from Greek god and director Yorgos Lanthimos. For this film, Yorgos has remade a 2003 South Korean movie called Save the Green Planet! Jesse Plemons plays a conspiracy theorist who, along with his cousin, abducts the CEO of the pharmaceutical company played by Emma Stone. Plemons' character delves into all sorts of alien conspiracy theories as Emma Stone's character tries to convince him otherwise. The film also stars Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone. It's another strange Yorgos vision with a wild ending that we'll spoil in this 200th episode!

Happy Thanksgiving! Sit down to the table and enjoy our Lodgecast feast as we consume Predator: Badlands! We'll discuss the Predator franchise, including the six movies leading up to Predator: Badlands. Then we'll take you to the hostile planet of Genna, where Dek, a young Yautja, has to kill the apex predator Kalisk. It's a hostile environment, and Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is joined by Thia (Elle Fanning), a damaged, legless Weyland-Yutani Corporation synthetic. Predator: Badlands was written by Patrick Aison and directed by Dan Trachtenberg. We indulged in some specialty Predator-themed drinks from the MacGuffins Bar for this special holiday episode!

Writer/director Ari Aster's Eddington is now available to watch on HBO Max. We caught it in theaters back in July, and we'll tell you all about our experience. We knew after Beau Is Afraid (2023) that we were in for a wild ride, and we were correct in that assumption. Only a trickster provocateur like Ari Aster would have the gall to make a 150-minute set during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic! For many people, the trauma of that period is too soon, but not for the Lodgecast. The movie features an excellent cast led by Joaquin Phoenix as a sheriff in small town Eddington, New Mexico, along with Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O'Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone. Put your masks on and stay six feet apart as you listen to our take on Ari Aster's Eddington!

The Toxic Avenger remake finally made its way to theaters in all its unrated glory. It's a remake of the classic Troma film The Toxic Avenger (1984). This reboot stars Peter Dinklage as Winston Gooze, who becomes the Toxic Avenger! The movie also stars Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Julia Davis, Jonny Coyne, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon. It was written and directed by Macon Blair. We saw it on the big screen and we'll let you know just how gross it got!

Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen is given the music biopic treatment with the brand new film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Based on a 2023 book by Warren Zanes, the movie covers Springsteen's turbulent time around the making of his 1982 album Nebraska. Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen as he battles his demons and tries to stay true to his working-class New Jersey roots. Jeremy Strong plays Springsteen's manager Jon Landau, and the movie also features Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, and Odessa Young. It's written and directed by Scott Cooper, who made the film Crazy Heart (2009) and other films. We talk about our relationship with Springsteen and then dive into a bumping Dolby screening of the movie on discount night!