It was Ben Franklin or George Bernard Shaw or someone who said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Luckily, this also happens to be a Be Reel tailor-made genre! On today’s show, Chance and Noah review “Tag,” “Game Night” and the classic “Clue” as we look […]
Author Archives: Chance Solem-Pfeifer
A Lost Weekend at “Hotel Artemis”
If every summer needs its Atomic Blonde — that stylish, violent, well-cast, over-stimulated, completely ludicrous and inessential action film — well, welcome to Hotel Artemis. Written and directed by Iron Man 3 co-scribe Drew Pearce, it’s a beautifully simple movie to pitch: in a dystopic Los Angeles of the near future, a half-dozen criminals spend a tense […]
Enterprising Americans
Boredom, boldness and a proper mark — those are the three ingredients shared by today’s category of “American” criminal films. It matters not if it’s New York in the ’70s or a sleepy college campus in 2004; flying too close to the sun for that big score is apparently a national pastime. We start the […]
Seemingly Unnecessary Prequels
Sequels are so 20th century; in the 21st, we supposedly want origin stories. Starting with the relative disappointment that is Disney’s new “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” Chance and Noah look at other more or less successful prequels: “Red Dragon” (prequel to “Silence of the Lambs”) and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (prequel […]
Stoner Odysseys
A couple 4/20’s ago, we spent a day on the couch with the genre of Cult Weed Movies (How High, Bongwater, etc.), but today our chosen stoner movies are on a mission, maybe to nowhere. In this week’s episode, we unpack the wild and circuitous journeys of some unlikely high heroes. Inherent Vice is groovy and insane (5:00), Dude, […]
The Old Modern Family
Here’s the story, of guys watching movies, and these movies are all linked around a theme. All of them are about adaptions, of TV series, about families with a dream. It’s a podcast, where Chance made Noah, watch three TV Land movies on his own. They were weird and, without context, maybe didn’t stand alone. […]
Social Media Terror
You don’t get to a couple hundred listeners without making a few social media observations. On this episode, Chance and Noah collect all their likes and reposts and subtweets to analyze how terrifying being online can be. Through “Ingrid Goes West” (6:15), “Unfriended” (39:55), and “The Social Network” (52:10), they look at the thin line […]
The American Psychos Of Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is a writer, commentator and real-life character almost too easily defined by the word “problematic.” The quintessentially ’80s novelist who struck a cultural chord with his borderline-nihilistic tales of excess, perversion and violence has aged into a fascinating person to do a podcast about. This week, Noah and Chance drop in on […]
Reeled In: “A Quiet Place”
It’s this year’s unexpected horror smash… but is “A Quiet Place” actually good-good? Is the cinematic ingenuity of this pseudo-indie picture enough to overcome some Cloverfield-level world-building? Chance and Noah break down the hokey premise (sound aliens), potentially pro-life politics (or lack thereof), and whether Jim from “The Office” could be a believable father even […]
Beauty And The Creep
Since early fairy tales, the wolf and red riding hood have done battle towards grandmother’s house. Of course in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this predator/prey relationship continues in our cinema—usually ending in murder. On this week’s episode, we look at cult classic “Wild Things,” and two recent additions to this genre of […]