Explore every episode of the podcast The Kulturecast

It's the stuff that dreams are made of. This week on Required Viewing, we go after John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941), the third screen version of Dashiell Hammett's novel and the one that stuck, turning Humphrey Bogart into a star and handing a first-time director the keys to what many call the first great film noir.We get into Bogart's Sam Spade, a detective whose code is hard to tell apart from self-interest; the gallery of grifters played by Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet; the Production Code pressures shaping what the film could say; and how a black bird that turns out to be worthless became one of cinema's great MacGuffins. Greed, loyalty and the birth of noir, from every angle.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, are joined by The Projection Booth's Mike White to chase the bird.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Godzilla has been a nuclear metaphor, a wrestling heel, a children's hero and a Hollywood franchise player, but it took 70 years for him to win an Oscar. Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One returns the monster to postwar Japan, where Ryunosuke Kamiki's Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who didn't fly his final mission, comes home to a ruined Tokyo, an improvised family with Minami Hamabe's Noriko, and the creature he failed to stop once before. Made on a reported budget of under $15 million, it won Best Visual Effects and became the highest-grossing Japanese live-action film ever released in the US.

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro meet in the middle for Kulture Meltdown, with The Projection Booth's Mike White joining in, to talk Takashi Yamazaki, Toho, survivor's guilt, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Camp Crystal Lake is open for business again. We dig into episodes 3 and 4 of Crystal Lake, where a bear hunt goes wrong, Pam settles a score on Grace's behalf, a crew of hippies reopens the camp, and Jason's flashbacks make the franchise's monster a kid worth mourning. Is Argonaut a government experiment, a super soldier, or something older in the woods? And once the show asks you to cheer for Pam as an avenging angel, is it still Friday the 13th?

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro meet in the middle for Kulture Meltdown to talk Grace's rise, the Jaws DNA, Stranger Things comparisons, why TV takes the risks film won't, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Before Jason, there was Mom. We head back to camp for the first two episodes of Crystal Lake, A24 and Peacock's Friday the 13th prequel series, with Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees a year after her son goes under the water. Two fake state troopers at the door, a bear that takes the blame, and a secret called Argonaut. Is this the Pam of 1980 with a backstory bolted on, or a show free to build its own mythology the way Hannibal and Bates Motel did? Two episodes in, it plays more like Dexter than a slasher, and that might be the point.

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro meet in the middle for Kulture Meltdown to talk grief as a motive, the gore, Cardellini's Pam, whether Jason even needs to show up, binge drops versus weekly TV, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

At 75, Rajinikanth is still the biggest draw in Indian cinema, and Jailer 2 is a reminder of why. Nelson Dilipkumar's sequel to his 2023 hit picks up with "Tiger" Muthuvel Pandian laying low after the events of the first film, until a new family of villains, Vidya Balan among them, comes calling. It's loud, long and gleefully over the top, with tonal swings from dark comedy to slow-motion carnage and a parade of cameos including Hrithik Roshan and Jackie Shroff. Even so, it can't quite recapture the father-son story at the heart of the original.

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and The Projection Booth's Mike White meet for Changeover to talk Rajinikanth, Nelson Dilipkumar, seeing Indian cinema in American theaters, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

A spy spoof written by a film professor, played dead straight by Clint Eastwood, with a mountaineering film inside it that cost a man his life. This week on Required Viewing, we rope up for The Eiger Sanction (1975), Eastwood's fourth film as director, which casts him as Jonathan Hemlock, an art-history professor and retired government assassin blackmailed into one last "sanction" on the deadliest face in the Alps — where one of the climbers on his team is the target.

We get into Trevanian, the pen name of a University of Texas film professor who wrote a parody and watched Hollywood miss the joke; Eastwood climbing Monument Valley's Totem Pole himself and hanging off the Eiger without a double, in the same production that killed a young British climber on its second day of shooting; John Williams' only score for Eastwood, written the same year as Jaws; and Perlmutter's question of what it means when the Western's last icon climbs in John Ford's Monument Valley for a spy picture. Three movies in one — which one is the real one, and is the climb the only part that holds up? From every angle.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, cut the rope.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

The Doctor of Podcasting is joined by Karl Mamer and Dr. David D. Perlmutter for Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford's Joe Turner is a CIA "reader" who steps out for lunch and comes back to find his whole office murdered. He spends three days running from his own agency, with Faye Dunaway as his unwilling ally and Max von Sydow's Joubert as the assassin who may be the most honest man in the film.

The conversation covers Pollack's paranoid New York, the post-Watergate distrust that drives the story, Dave Grusin's score, and that ending outside the New York Times, plus whether "They'll print it" lands differently fifty years on.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It opens on Day 2, with a cough in the dark. This week on Required Viewing, we put Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011) under the microscope — the cold, procedural pandemic thriller that spent a decade as a well-made what-if, then climbed back up the rental charts in the spring of 2020 as the whole world's homework.

We get into Soderbergh's refusal to dramatize (he dispatches one of his Oscar winners inside the first ten minutes), Scott Z. Burns' script that treats a virus as a logistics problem, and a camera that teaches you to fear a door handle before anyone explains the science. We dig into what the film called correctly — the spillover, the contact tracing, the race for a vaccine — and what it badly underestimated: us. Jude Law's blogger selling a fake cure looked like a subplot in 2011; it reads like the main event now. Science versus rumor, the system versus the people it serves, and a film that only got more required the longer we waited — from every angle.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, wash their hands and trace it back to Day 1.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We'll be honest; neither of us expected the AI apocalypse to be fought from a diner booth. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Gore Verbinski's first film in nearly a decade, sends Sam Rockwell's ragged Man From the Future into a Los Angeles diner for his 117th attempt to recruit the world's least likely resistance. Bryan had a blast; Chris found it more uneven, a film with more ideas than it knows what to do with. However, we agree on the man at its center: Rockwell is unhinged, hilarious and the best reason to buy a ticket for this particular end of the world.

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro meet in the middle for Kulture Meltdown to talk Verbinski, Rockwell, the robot apocalypse, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We'll be honest; it's fashionable to hate Tom Cruise, and neither of us ever has. Digger, the latest from Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, stars Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an oil baron racing to prove he's the only man who can fix the catastrophe he set in motion. Chris loved it; Mike walked in ready to damn it with faint praise and talked himself around by the end. However, we agree on what it is: heavy-handed, badly sold, and somehow both the least Tom Cruise movie in years and the most Tom Cruise movie either of us can think of.

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and The Projection Booth's Mike White meet for Changeover to talk Iñárritu, Cruise, the billionaire class, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We'll be honest; we both spent a good chunk of the 2000s watching grown men sit down at a kitchen table they'd regret, and neither of us thought much about the man holding the clipboard. Primetime, the narrative debut from Ren Faire documentarian Lance Oppenheim, does — casting Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the Dateline correspondent who turned sting operations into appointment television. Bryan found it a mess; Chris found it a compelling one. However, we both left asking the same question: what does it tell us about predators, or the man with the clipboard, that the show didn't tell us first?

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro meet in the middle for Kulture Meltdown to talk Oppenheim, Pattinson, To Catch a Predator, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

You're gonna need a bigger boat. This week on Required Viewing, we wade into Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) — the film that invented the summer blockbuster, emptied the beaches of an entire generation, and pulled it off precisely because the shark wouldn't work. We get into the happy accident at the center of it: a malfunctioning mechanical fish that forced a 27-year-old Spielberg to hide his monster, turning technical catastrophe into pure Hitchcockian dread — that, and two notes from John Williams.

We dig into the real horror beneath the horror (a town that keeps the beaches open for the money), the perfect Brody–Quint–Hooper triangle, Robert Shaw's Indianapolis speech, and how one problem-plagued shoot rewired Hollywood's entire business model in a single summer. Man versus nature, man versus man, and the blockbuster's original sin — from every angle.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, go in the water.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Video game movies rarely earn high expectations, and the Resident Evil franchise alone had offered seven reasons to keep them low. However, Zach Cregger, the director behind Barbarian and Weapons, has done the unthinkable: he throws out Leon, Claire and the games' plots entirely and sends Austin Abrams' medical courier Bryan (no relation) into Raccoon City for one very long night, with Paul Walter Hauser and Zach Cherry among the Umbrella scientists caught in the outbreak. The result is a lean, nasty, genuinely scary horror film, and for the first time in the franchise's history, the game isn't the better version.

The Kulturecast's Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, and Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro meet in the middle for Kulture Meltdown to talk Cregger, Capcom, survival horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Is it even a movie? That's the question Barry Lyndon has provoked since 1975 — three hours of scenes so composed they look less like cinema than oil paintings that happen to breathe. This week on Required Viewing, Dr. David D. Perlmutter — "the Prof" — drags Stanley Kubrick's most beautiful, most divisive film to the table: the one even Kubrick devotees can't agree is a film at all.

We get into the candlelight Kubrick captured with lenses built for NASA, a production that had to invent its own tools to exist, and a static, painterly style that would ripple forward into The Favourite. We wrestle with Ryan O'Neal's passive, buffeted Barry, the narrator who condemns him before he can charm us, and a film so often called "beautiful but empty" — asking whether the emptiness is the whole point. Class as a cage, a scoundrel with no moral agency, and a technical achievement so singular it's a genre of one that simply couldn't be made today.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, take it apart from every angle.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

If you missed last week's Rob Zombie goes to Haddonfield edition of the show, this one will make about as much sense as watching this movie without having seen the first. Part two of our look at the Zombie reboot series takes on Halloween II, his 2009 sequel, which picks up with Scout Taylor-Compton's traumatized Laurie Strode, Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis cashing in on the massacre with a book tour, and a Michael Myers haunted by visions of his mother, played by Sheri Moon Zombie. Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro returns to keep digging into Rob Zombie's foray into mainstream horror.

Bryan Renfro of Movie Meltdown joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Rob Zombie, Michael Myers, mainstream horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It was the most expensive movie ever made, the punchline of a thousand headlines, and a flop so infamous it got its own nickname. This week on Required Viewing, we bail out Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995) and study it from every angle — separating the film that's actually on screen from the runaway-budget legend that swallowed it whole.

We get into Mad Max on the open ocean, the world-building that still holds up, Dennis Hopper chewing more scenery than the Smokers could ever burn, the environmental anxieties it was early to, and why a movie everyone "knows" was a disaster has quietly floated toward cult reappraisal. Was it the trainwreck history says, or did we all just enjoy watching it sink? Let's find dry land.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, navigate this one.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

The last thing the world needs in 2026 is another Halloween film, but to be fair, the last thing the world needed in 2007 was another Halloween film, especially one directed by Rob Zombie. Given that it does in fact exist, we kick off an oversized two-part look at the Zombie reboot series with his remake of John Carpenter's classic, which spends its first act on young Michael Myers' troubled childhood before Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis, Scout Taylor-Compton's Laurie Strode and Tyler Mane's towering Michael take over Haddonfield. It's Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro's first time on the Kulturecast, and the conversation covers the finer points of reboots, Rob Zombie, and a whole lot more.

Bryan Renfro of Movie Meltdown joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Rob Zombie, John Carpenter, reboots, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Two guys, a week in wine country, and a whole lot of avoidance. This week on Required Viewing, we uncork Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) and study it from every angle — why a shaggy road-trip comedy about a failed novelist and a fading actor became the defining midlife-male-sadness movie of its era, and what it's really pouring underneath the pinot.

We get into Payne's gift for making you laugh at people you'd never want to be, Miles as a portrait of self-sabotage dressed up as good taste, wine as the film's central metaphor (yes, that merlot line), and how a small character comedy quietly reshaped an entire industry. Great movie, terrible role models — let's swirl it around.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, pour this one out.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

From suburban horror to the back end of the Cretaceous, the American genre picture keeps finding new ways to burn down the cul-de-sac. The End of Oak Street, the latest from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, is a studio tentpole carrying an arthouse thesis, offering Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a marriage coming apart at the seams while something much older comes down the street. Along with a fleet of dinosaurs shot without an ounce of reverence, it takes to task suburban rot, willful ignorance, and the family unit under pressure, to largely successful effect.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk David Robert Mitchell, dinosaur cinema, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Every film says more than whether it was good. Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study is a brand new sub-feed within The Kulturecast, where we take one film, TV series or pop culture topic each Thursday and look at it from every angle: theme, craft and cultural fallout, with the star ratings thrown out entirely. On this Episode Zero: Syllabus, the good doctors lay out the thesis behind the show, what it takes for something to earn the label "required viewing", and what you can expect to hear in the episodes to come.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, sit down to write the syllabus.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

From Train to Busan to the far-flung future of cloning and fascism, Korean cinema spans the genre gamut. Mickey 17, the latest from Parasite director Bong Joon Ho, adapts Edward Ashton's novel Mickey7 and casts Robert Pattinson in two roles, as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, a pair of disposable clones on an icy colony world. Backed by a cavalcade of character actors including Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Naomi Ackie and Steven Yeun, it takes aim at fascism, biotech abuse and more, though in our view to unsuccessful effect.

Texas Tech's Dr. David D. Perlmutter and K-drama anthropologist Miranda join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Korean cinema, Bong Joon Ho, clones, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

As the MCU barrels toward its next ultimate crossover event, Avengers: Doomsday, we first check in on everyone's friendly neighborhood webhead. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, brings back Tom Holland for the fourth MCU take on Spidey, this time with 100% less multiversal madness, thankfully. Along for the ride are Jon Bernthal's Punisher, Florence Pugh's Black Widow and maybe even an X-Man or two, and we talk about all of them and how this Peter Parker stands on his own.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Tom Holland, the Punisher, the road to Doomsday, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Some sci-fi films vanish from the conversation almost as soon as they leave theaters, and Battle: Los Angeles is one of them. Jonathan Liebesman's 2011 film drops Aaron Eckhart's Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz and a Marine platoon, including Michelle Rodriguez's Technical Sergeant Elena Santos, into an alien invasion of Los Angeles, toeing the line between war movie and creature feature. In doing so, it does something few films since have managed: build a novel and compelling world for an alien invasion to unfold in. We talk war, aliens, and what happens when the two are combined.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk war films, alien invasions, Aaron Eckhart, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It may be simplistic to say the BlackBerry died at the hands of the iPhone, but it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate. What a beautiful corpse it made, though: the device became so ubiquitous it earned its own nickname, the "CrackBerry". Matt Johnson's BlackBerry stars Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis and Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie, tracing the Canadian company's rise and spectacular fall, and we dig into the film as well as the real history surrounding it.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Mark Stachiw join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk BlackBerry, Research in Motion, the smartphone wars, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Last year's Superman was a genuine surprise, especially for those of us who had soured heavily on the previous attempt at a unified DC Universe in Zack Snyder's Darkseriousverse, and the hope was real that James Gunn would point the ship in a new, more interesting direction. Unfortunately, Supergirl is not that. Directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, with Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley and Jason Momoa's Lobo, it barely lives up to even the smaller successes of Superman while trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to broaden the universe.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, once again to talk Milly Alcock, DC comics, why Superman just ain't for either of us, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Jackass has been a part of pop culture since the show first aired on MTV back in the pastoral days of 2000. Twenty-six years later, the boys are a bit older but still up to, for the most part, their old tricks. The crew has shrunk (and grown) over two decades, but the rambunctious stunts and pranks remain, even if Jeff Tremaine's Jackass: Best and Last, the fifth and final main film, is effectively a glorified clip show at worst and a documentary-style goodbye at best.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Johnny Knoxville, gross-out stunts, the end of an era, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Sci-fi has taken many forms as a genre, and since it's one both Dr. Perlmutter and Chris have an affinity for, why not cover one of the true classics? Fred M. Wilcox's Forbidden Planet sends Leslie Nielsen's Commander Adams to a distant world where Walter Pidgeon's Dr. Morbius, his daughter Altaira and Robby the Robot are hiding a terrible secret, in a loose riff on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Those who saw it in theaters may not have realized it was merely an amuse-bouche for the more pop-culture-pliable Star Trek, but it's well worth talking about and reappraising from a modern-day perspective.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Forbidden Planet, Robby the Robot, monsters from the id, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Zombie films are a dime a dozen these days, for good and for bad; for every Shaun of the Dead there are a hundred Walking Deads, everyone's favorite show to hate-watch. There's no hate-watching with Train to Busan, however. Yeon Sang-ho's film traps Gong Yoo's workaholic fund manager, his young daughter and a carriage full of strangers, including Ma Dong-seok's unforgettable Sang-hwa, on a bullet train as a zombie outbreak tears through South Korea, and it's one of the finest examples of how to innovate the genre even after all of its ground has been trodden.

Texas Tech's Dr. David D. Perlmutter and K-drama anthropologist Miranda join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Korean cinema, Yeon Sang-ho, zombies, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

At this point in his career, a Steven Spielberg film should be an event worth heading to the local multiplex for; should being the key phrase. Couple that with a return to aliens, and it seems like an equation for cinematic success... right? Disclosure Day, written by David Koepp from Spielberg's story, stars Emily Blunt as a Kansas City meteorologist and Josh O'Connor as a cybersecurity specialist who uncover decades of covered-up extraterrestrial contact, alongside Colin Firth and Colman Domingo. We dig into Spielberg's latest extraterrestrial entry and whether it holds up against his other alien films.

Mike White of The Projection Booth joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Spielberg, Emily Blunt, UFO disclosure, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Chris may not be a Gen-Zer, but he can most definitely get down with their brand of horror, if Backrooms is any indication of the quality and concept of their take on the genre. Kane Parsons' feature debut for A24, adapted from his own viral YouTube series, follows Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve into an endless maze of yellow rooms beneath a furniture showroom. Contrast that with Scary Movie, the Wayans brothers' horror-comedy franchise returning from a long, justified and much-needed absence, and you have a hell of a double feature, or at least two very apropos weekends at the cinema. Chris bemoans one far more than the other and, shockingly, it was the more expensive of the two.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Backrooms, Scary Movie, Gen Z horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We're running it back on some films we've already watched, starting with a Robert Eggers film that has become a modern-day classic: The VVitch. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Thomasin, who lives with her exiled Puritan family on the edge of the woods in 1630s New England, and that family may or may not be under the sway of a witch in the woods. Thomasin and her kin are doomed to find out whether the witch is real, and whether Black Phillip is just a goat.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Julie Brannan join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Robert Eggers, Anya Taylor-Joy, folk horror, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May has been all Sean Connery all month long, and now it must come to an end, which it does with a monk murder mystery in The Name of the Rose. Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Umberto Eco's novel stars Connery as William of Baskerville, a thin facsimile of Sherlock Holmes, and Christian Slater as Adso, his young stand-in for Watson, as they investigate a series of strange murders at an abbey in northern Italy. Plus, star Elya Baskin, who plays Severinus, is interviewed about his time on the film.

Richard Hatem of Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Sean Connery, Umberto Eco, medieval mysteries, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We take a break from Mike White May to talk about the latest entry in the forever franchise that Star Wars has become: The Mandalorian and Grogu. Directed by Jon Favreau, it features Pedro Pascal, at least some of the time, under the helmet as Din Djarin, alongside Grogu, as the space western follows the pair's further exploits. Working for the New Republic, they take on a job to free Rotta the Hutt, the son of Jabba, voiced by Jeremy Allen White, with Sigourney Weaver along for the ride.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into The Mandalorian and Grogu, Jon Favreau, the state of Star Wars, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May continues with more Sean Connery, except this time it's fake news, and he's the one selling it. In Richard Brooks' Wrong Is Right, adapted from Charles McCarry's novel The Better Angels, Connery plays Patrick Hale, a globetrotting TV newsman who gets tangled up with every US letter agency in a satirical game of intrigue and murder, opposite Robert Conrad, Katharine Ross and Leslie Nielsen. It's less fun than it sounds, which is a real shame given the Connery of it all.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Wrong Is Right, Sean Connery, Richard Brooks, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Before Yellowstone made him a household name, Taylor Sheridan wrote Sicario. Denis Villeneuve directs Emily Blunt as an FBI agent pulled into a cartel task force whose rules nobody will explain to her, while Benicio del Toro's Alejandro quietly walks away with the entire film. It's a thriller about borders, the ones on the map and the moral ones, and about finding out you were never the one making the decisions. We talk Villeneuve, Roger Deakins' camera, and the land of wolves.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Sicario, Taylor Sheridan, Denis Villeneuve, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We take another break from Mike White May to travel back to Netherrealm, Outworld and everywhere in between (looking at you, Orderrealm) with Mortal Kombat II, the sequel to 2021's COVID classic Mortal Kombat. With the first tournament in the books, Simon McQuoid's follow-up shifts focus to Johnny Cage, played by Karl Urban, as he is thrown right into the latest struggle of wills between Raiden, Shang Tsung and the ultimate baddie, Shao Kahn.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Mortal Kombat II, Karl Urban's Johnny Cage, video game adaptations, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We take a break from Mike White May to go to college, specifically Harvard Law in the early 1970s, with James Bridges' The Paper Chase. Timothy Bottoms, a future presidential look-alike, stars as James Hart, a first-year law student who runs into one of the true titans of cinematic academia: John Houseman's Oscar-winning Professor Kingsfield. We get into law school horror stories, how real the film is, and whether the ends justify the academic means.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Mark Stachiw, Esq. join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk The Paper Chase, Professor Kingsfield, law school, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May continues with more Sean Connery, this time with an edgier, more facial-hair-forward demeanor, in yet another Sidney Lumet joint, The Offence. Adapted by John Hopkins from his own stage play, it stars Connery as Detective Sergeant Johnson, a British cop who's had one bad day too many and takes it out on Ian Bannen's suspected child molester, with catastrophic results. We get into Connery, noir, and the film's influence on '90s crime cinema.

Professor Spencer Parsons joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Sean Connery, Sidney Lumet, noir, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Mike White May continues with yet another Connery and Lumet joint, this time an adaptation of Lawrence Sanders' novel of the same name. Connery plays John "Duke" Anderson, a burglar fresh out of prison who decides to rob the luxury apartment building where his latest squeeze, Dyan Cannon's Ingrid, lives, all while being inadvertently surveilled by a whole host of letter agencies. Martin Balsam, Alan King and a young Christopher Walken round out the crew.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into The Anderson Tapes, Sean Connery, surveillance-era heists, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It's Mike White May here at The Kulturecast, and we're talking Sean Connery all month long! We kick things off with one of the many pairings of Sidney Lumet and Connery, 1965's The Hill. With an ensemble cast including Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, Ian Hendry and Ossie Davis, it follows a group of military prisoners held in a British Army "glasshouse" in the North African desert during World War II, where men are broken just for fun.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into The Hill, Sean Connery, Sidney Lumet, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

We begin our mini-look at Taylor Sheridan's cinematic works with one of his more Western-facing screenplays, Hell or High Water. Directed by David Mackenzie, it stars Chris Pine and Ben Foster as brothers robbing branches of the bank that's foreclosing on their family's land, with Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham as the Texas Rangers on their trail. It's a sharp look at violence, poverty, and what one will do for family in the face of both.

Texas Tech's Dr. David D. Perlmutter, professor of media and communication, joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk West Texas, the cowboys-and-Indians mythology of it all, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It may not have won Best Picture or Best Actress at the most recent Academy Awards, but Bugonia was not only one of the best films of the last year, it was also one of the most thought-provoking. Yorgos Lanthimos' remake of Save the Green Planet! stars Jesse Plemons as a conspiracy-minded beekeeper who kidnaps Emma Stone's pharmaceutical CEO, convinced she's an alien. It's a character study and a musing on the state of the world and the way humans have left it.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter, professor of media and communication, joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Sometimes even we don't know why we do the things we do, but this time around it's because we have to do our due diligence as film critics and take a bullet for you, the listener. Instead of rewatching Vice or W., we subjected ourselves to Melania, Brett Ratner's film following Melania Trump through the 20 days before Donald Trump's second inauguration, which Amazon MGM Studios licensed for a reported $40 million. That totally wasn't a bribe to the Trump family, because if it were, it would essentially be light propaganda, right? Right.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Melania, Brett Ratner, Amazon's $40 million documentary, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Big caveman energy abounds on this episode of The Kulturecast, as we dig into Ötzi the Iceman and a film told in a dead language all about him: Felix Randau's Iceman. Jürgen Vogel stars as Kelab, a Neolithic man who sets out across the Alps for revenge, in a story told with almost no dialogue and that only in untranslated, reconstructed Rhaetic. If you're not a fan of dialogue but are a fan of cavemen, this is the film for you.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Richard Hatem of Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Ötzi, the Stone Age, dead languages, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Frankenstein's monster has had a century of remakes; his bride has had one great film and a whole lot of waiting. Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! (2026) finally hands her the lead, with Jessie Buckley as the resurrected woman and Christian Bale as the lonely creature who asks for her, the pair set loose in 1930s Chicago. On this episode of The Kulturecast, we talk the long shadow of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Gyllenhaal's considerable ambitions as a writer-director, and whether the revolution she promises actually arrives.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessie Buckley, Mary Shelley's monsters, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Have you ever experienced déjà vu? Have you ever experienced déjà vu? On this episode of The Kulturecast, Dr. David D. Perlmutter returns for Tony Scott's Déjà Vu (2006), in which Denzel Washington's ATF agent Doug Carlin investigates a ferry bombing in New Orleans using a government surveillance window that can look four days into the past, and starts to wonder whether looking is all it can do. It's a Tony Scott film that doesn't make nearly as many cuts as you'd expect, and it's all about time travel, surveillance, and the convergence of the two.

Dr. David D. Perlmutter joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Tony Scott, Denzel Washington, time travel, surveillance, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Nine experienced hikers set out into the northern Ural Mountains in 1959, and none of them came back. The Dyatlov Pass Incident is one of the most enduring mysteries in mountaineering, and the theories about what happened seem endless. On this episode of The Kulturecast, physicist Dr. Katharine Mullen and Dr. David D. Perlmutter dig into An Unknown Compelling Force (2021), Liam Le Guillou's documentary that retraces the hikers' route and sorts through the theories and possible explanations surrounding the incident. Science meets speculation, from every angle.

Physicist Dr. Katharine Mullen and Dr. David D. Perlmutter join Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk the Dyatlov Pass Incident, avalanches, conspiracy theories, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

If you thought it was all going to be serious, introspective chats about films, worry not, dear listener: French comedies are still a thing that exists! The Projection Booth's Mike White joins the show for a four-film episode covering Jean-Marie Poiré's The Visitors trilogy, in which Jean Reno's 12th-century knight Godefroy and Christian Clavier's grubby squire Jacquouille are flung into the modern day, plus Just Visiting (2001), the English-language remake. Somehow, you might be surprised what we suggest you check out from this one.

The Projection Booth's Mike White joins Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, to talk Jean Reno, Christian Clavier, time-travelling knights, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Halloween is the best holiday of the year, and every Halloween The Kulturecast marks it with a horror movie. This year it felt very apropos to cover Halloween Ends (2022), David Gordon Green's final chapter of his trilogy, with Jamie Lee Curtis back as Laurie Strode. It arrived in the middle years of the pandemic and divided the horror community over its treatment of Michael Myers and its focus on a new, possible replacement. Divisiveness aside, the film treats Myers like a trauma monster, has some wild kills, and features an opening that may be one of the finest cold opens in horror history.

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Michael Myers, Laurie Strode, David Gordon Green, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Tron is a franchise that seems to come back every fifteen to twenty years for another swing at bat, usually with arresting visuals and a killer soundtrack in tow. Tron: Ares (2025), directed by Joachim Rønning, sends Jared Leto's program Ares out of the Grid and into the real world, with Greta Lee, Evan Peters and a returning Jeff Bridges, and Nine Inch Nails on score. However, in more than 40 years has the franchise ever really escaped the gravity of the cult of cool that keeps it stylistically interesting but short on a truly engaging story? Seems like a question worth asking!

Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, digs into Tron: Ares, Jared Leto, the Grid, and so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast