Tag Archives: REVIEWS

Frotcast 443: The Thing About Hamilton, With Francesca Fiorentini And Andrew Law

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The time has finally come for the Frotcast to discuss Hamilton, a play Matt has seen and loved and thus far failed to convince me (Vince) to watch. UNTIL NOW! Is Hamilton the defining theatrical achievement of our times or some cheesy overhyped schoolhouse rock bullshit?

To join us in this discussion, we have Francesca Fiorentini, host of the Bitchuation Room, founder of Newsbroke on AJ+, and frequent guest on The Young Turks, who once, along with Matt forced me to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack on our way to the Russian River in the back of Matt’s Honda Civic; and Andrew Law, aka IllyBocean on Twitter and cohost of the BoontaVista Podcast, who, like me, was a skeptical Hamilton virgin, BUT has the added hurdle of being an Australian who wasn’t forcefed the Founding Fathers and Constitutional Convention in school.

It’s a spirited discussion, and naturally, Matt turns it into many analingus puns for his Hamilton parody about eating butt, Lumilton.

Sample discussion of geopolitics:

MATT: Wait, Australia has a queen?

ANDREW: The Queen of England, baby. We’re still subjects of the commonwealth.

MATT: Wow, that’s weird!

Hey, we’ve got lots of amazing bonus content, especially these past few weeks, including me and Matt reviewing The King Of Staten Island. Hear them right now by signing up to our Patreon, Patreon.com/Frotcast.

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TEASER: Frotcast 441, Laremy Is Ir-RESIST-ible

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THE FULL VERSION OF THIS FROTCAST IS AVAILABLE FOR OUR PATRONS. BECOME ONE AT PATREON.COM/FROTCAST, AND ENJOY ALL OF OUR BONUS #CONTENT.

This week on the Frotcast, ex-film critic, author of ‘Film Critic,’ and star of ‘Whoop Dreams’ Laremy Legel rejoins Matt and Vince in the Zoom Frotquarters to discuss Jon Stewart’s new movie IRRESISTiBLE, starring  Steve Carell and Rose Byrne as dueling political consultants who wage proxy war in a Wisconsin town. At first we were like “why the hell is this movie called ‘Irresistible?’ But then the title comes up at the end with some creative typography and we were like “Oohhh, that’s why it’s called Irresistible.”

Aaaanyway, we discuss our historic love of Jon Stewart and debate why this movie is getting such bad reviews. On one level, it’s kind of a good movie masquerading as a bad one for two acts, and you could argue that’s a weird move, but on another level it seems like certain people disliked it because it committed some sin against media orthodoxy by pointing out the Democrats are also bad. GRR, BOTH SIDESISM! Anyway, Rose Byrne is great.

After that we discuss Matt getting mistaken for the worst #resistance grifter and whether Alex Jones is actually Dan Carlin’s Wario.

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Teaser: King Of Staten Island Bonus Review, Plus JK Rowling And Ice Cube

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This week’s Frotcast is available on Patreon! Subscribe now to hear the rest of this show and a veritable mountain of bonus content. You can add our premium content to your regular podcast feed! Subscribe at Patreon.com/Frotcast, tell your friends.

In this week’s bonus Frotcast, I had to watch The King Of Staten Island because I’m a movie critic so I forced Matt to watch it with me. Sometimes being a movie critic doesn’t feel like work and other times Spike Lee and Judd Apatow both release 140-minute+ movies on the same weekend. PITY ME! Matt and I discuss Pete Davidson, how this movie could’ve been better, Bill Burr’s shockingly good performance, and why movies always want us to think 20-something year old adult men care who their mom is dating. Gross, man, come on. And then, just when you think we’re through, nope, we got more to talk about. Like, did Ice Cube fall down an Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory rabbit hole this week? And does Just Kidding Rowling, aka JK Rowling coming out as a transphobe retroctively validate us never giving a shit about Harry Potter? There are a couple of accents and everything is pretty dumb but hopefully you don’t have anything better to do and that’s why we love you. Please to enjoy.

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TEASER – Frotcast Bonus: Star Wars The Rise Of Skywalker

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This episode available to $5 patrons at Patreon.com/Frotcast!

As Robert Evans once wrote, “Fighting is healthy. If everyone has too much reverence for each other, or for the material, results are invariably underwhelming. It’s irreverence that makes things sizzle. It’s irreverence that gives you that shot at touching magic.”

That, in a nutshell, is what was wrong with Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, in this podder’s opinion. A film needs to have a point of view, and this film’s point of view seemed to be “We really like Star Wars movies! Hooray, Leia! Hooray, Lando!”

That being said, Star Wars movies tend to range in quality from B+ to B-, so even when I say it was “bad” I mean that it was still more or less okay, and only marginally worse than the last couple of Star Wars movies. I do think it was the worst of any of the new ones. Matt liked it more than I did, but we both agree that it was better than the prequels, which is a low bar indeed.

Anyway, we discuss all of that, including whether the original trilogy is a story about how the Boomers “beat” the Empire, and whether the principals in the latest trilogy (millennials?) should be taking the Boomers’ advice on how to defeat the reformed Empire once again (with all due citation to Matt Louv‘s comedy bit that inspired this whole discussion). There are smaller matters too, like how the hell people are riding horses on top of ships in outer space, whether Lando was horny at the end there, and why all the black characters seem to know each other. Oh, and Matt debuts a few new characters, including “Bubba Fett,” intergalactic bounty hunter and former long-haul trucker. Please enjoy.

For all this #Content and more, become a patron at Patreon.com/Frotcast. You’ll never be lonely when you have the Frotcast.

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TEASER: Marriage Story With Francesca Fiorentini

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This week’s Bonus Frotcast and all Bonus Frotcasts are available at Patreon.com/Frotcast. You can add our premium feed to your regular podcast app.

In this week’s bonus movie Frotcast, Francesca Fiorentini from The Bitchuation Room and The Young Turks joins us to discuss the year’s most talked about film, Marriage Story. Boy, people sure do love middlebrow dreck about sexless intellectuals, don’t they? Starring Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansson, Noah Baumbach’s latest is yet another work to remind me of John Dolan’s takedown of Jonathan Franzen:

Yes, it’s time someone said it outright: Manhattanites are the new  hicks. The mall kids are generations ahead of them. Things that are  stale jokes to the mall kids strike the NY publishing world as fresh and  hilarious. Maybe they just don’t watch enough TV, or they spend too  much time drinking cocktails with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ghost — whatever  the reason, the Manhattanites have lost it completely. The  scriptwriters of Christmas Vacationare Flaubertian chroniclers  of provincial mores next to Franzen. When you compare Franzen with  really talented observers of Minnesota life, like the Coens in Fargo, or even Garrison Keillor inLake Wobegon Days, his incompetence stands out even more sharply.

And  if one were to compare him with the great novelist of “pelagic  America,” Charles Portis… no, it would be an insult to Portis even to  compare a hack like Franzen with him. And yet Portis is all but unknown,  while Franzen is everybody’s darling…. Agh, ya buncha idiots!

Now just re-read this passage so that it’s about Brooklynites, Marriage Story, and Mrs. Fletcher (which is kind of like Marriage Story only much better). Yes, unfortunately (or fortunately?), none of your Frot pals liked this movie so much — which is kind of weird, since Francesca is divorced, Matt and I are both dating divorceés, and all three of us work in the arts and/or entertainment, so we should be the target audience (Francesca and I even lived in Brooklyn!). As Matt puts it, their fights are like a montage of every relationship argument in a play you’ve ever seen. I contend that this movie is either about a couple where a person is too cowardly to admit that they don’t love the other person anymore, or a couple who still loves each other but whose relationship couldn’t survive them wanting slightly different careers. Oy. No more stories about sexless New York intellectuals, please.

We finish things off reading about the Topanga tea ceremony and listen to your weird voicemails. You guys are sick, truly. Frot on, and you’ll never be lonely when you have the Frotcast.

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Frotcast 419: Trapped In A Lighthouse with Brendan

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Keepin’ secrets, are ye?? That’s right, this week on the Frotcast we’ve reunited with our old pal Brendan to discuss a film that’s firmly in the Frotcast wheelhouse. I’m talking about The Lighthouse, starring Willem Dafoe, who Brendan once imagined had a “gnarled penis” and has long been one of his favorite impressions, behind Michael Caine and Mark Ruffalo. Brendan also had a nautical childhood in which his father taught him the NATO alphabet and forced him to sail. When he texted me about The Lighthouse I had to look up what “scrimshaw” was. How is it in Matt’s wheelhouse? Well, it turns out it’s basically an entire movie about a guy who is mad because he’s so horny. Matt hates being horny! He also loves parroting movie lines of old-timey curmudgeons and in William Dafoe’s “wickie” he has found his new Daniel Plainview.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! Yes, this episode has lots of “spoilers.” Personally I think The Lighthouse is impossible to spoil and you’ll be fine if you haven’t seen it, but I don’t want anyone whining. It would’ve been weird not to discuss “plot points,” because The Lighthouse has like three of them and they don’t really matter. In any case, listen at yer own risk, ye dogs.

We wrap things up with your voicemails and some texts from Bret. Now, time to drink exactly one beer and call 911.

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Teaser: Matt And Vince Talk ‘Parasite’

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This week’s Bonus Frotcast and all Bonus Frotcasts are available at Patreon.com/Frotcast. You can add our premium feed to your regular podcast app.

On this week’s bonus Frotcast, Matt and I are discussing what seems objectively to be one of the year’s best films, Parasite from Bong Joon Ho. A family of grifters (the Kims) lives in a semi-underground apartment where they steal wifi and have to chase away drunks trying to piss on their windows, until they find a rich family (the Parks) who just might be their meal ticket — provided the Kims can con their way into the Parks’ home and into their hearts. There’s only one thing standing in their way: some other poor people. It’s a comedy of a manners, it’s a class story, it’s weird as hell sometimes and super funny, we loved it. We’re discussing all the things you may have missed and reading Armond White’s review to find out why he’s one of two negative reviews on RottenTomatoes for it.

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Frotcast Bonus: Jojo Rabbit, With Matt And Vince

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This week’s Bonus Frotcast and all Bonus Frotcasts are available at Patreon.com/Frotcast. You can add our premium feed to your regular podcast app!

Jojo has an imaginary friend, and get this: it’s ADOLF HITLER. That’s right, on this week’s bonus Frotcast, Matt and I are discussing Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, which is basically Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, only with Nazis instead of boy scouts. Oh, and also the Drop Dead Hitler thing. We discuss whether Scarlett Johansson’s character is brilliant or obnoxious, whether we enjoy watching stories about little kids in love, what a Nazi comedy should look like, and pitch our ideal version of this movie, where it’s just about Sam Rockwell’s character getting wild in the dying days of the Third Reich. Please enjoy and subscribe! Let the Frotcast be your imaginary Hitler.

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Joker Image via Warner Bros

Frotcast 418: Eh, I’m Joakin’ Here, With Joey Avery

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This week, the San Diego Hammer, Joey Avery returns to the Frotcast to help Vince and Matt sort through our Joker feelings and ask how we managed to avoid getting shot in a spree-killing by some Joker-inspired incel. So this Joker movie… we kinda liked it? That topic takes up the bulk of our time, but we also spare some time to discuss Terrence Howard at the Emmys last week, and some of his incredible discoveries in the realm of mathematics, astronomy, particle physics, and… uh… horticulture? He opened up the flower of life, we know at least that much. Joey has a new comedy album out (Junior Varsity, by Pier 69!) so be sure to check that out, and in related news, Joey recently met his spiritual sibling, Urijah Faber, the most chilled out surf bro ever inducted into the UFC hall of fame. Hope you like this episode! Be sure to join us on Patreon at Patreon.com/frotcast for all the bonus content, including this month’s live riff of Tiptoes.

Email us at Frotcast@gmail.com, voicemail at 415 275 0030.

You’ll never be lonely when you have the Frotcast.

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Death Of Dick Long Still courtesy A24

TEASER: Matt And Vince Talk The Death Of Dick Long

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This week’s Bonus Frotcast and all Bonus Frotcasts are available at Patreon.com/Frotcast. You can add our premium feed to your regular podcast app.

A few weeks ago I drove across town into the teeth of five o’clock traffic and saw a movie that instantly put me in a good mood — no small feat! That movie was ‘The Death Of Dick Long’ and it was so good that I demanded Matt see it to prove that I wasn’t crazy. Turns out, we both loved it, so much that we had to do a podcast about it. What do most movies about rural goofballs get so wrong and how does ‘The Death Of Dick Long’ get it so right? Why does this movie remind us so much of going to The Gathering Of The Juggalos a few years back? Discover the answers to these questions and more (what is the meaning of life? why am I here? why does the caged bird sing?) on this week’s B-B-B-B-B-B-BONUS FROTCAST! Check out ‘The Death Of Dick Long’ when it opens this weekend (if it’s playing near you) and remember: you’ll never be lonely when you have the Frotcast.

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