Podcast: The Three Musketeers (2011)

Wirework lover and wife guy Paul W.S. Anderson tries his hand at an adventure classic with 2011's The Three Musketeers! How is he going to find a way to add Matrix fights, laser traps and exploding airships into this one? Starring Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, Mads Mikkelsen, Chrisoph Waltz, and, you guessed it, Milla Jovovich.

After a successful heist in Venice, the musketeers and Milady manage to steal Leonardo la Vinci's famous airship plans. Athos (Matthew Macfadyen) uses his classic scuba ninja skills, Aramis (Evans) his Assassin’s Creed cloak-wearing skills, and Porthos (Stevenson) his getting into prison on purpose skills. However, tragedy strikes when Milady, with the help of the Duke of Buckingham (Bloom) betrays the team and steals the plans for the duke.

One year later, D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) is a Gascon bumpkin heading to the big city to start duels with everyone he meets. After picking a fight with Rochefort (Mikkelsen), the best swordsman in France, he picks fights with the 2nd-4th best swordsmen in France: the Three Musketeers. But they become friends anyway, and engage in a highly bastardized version of the book’s plot in order to thwart the evil plan of Cardinal Richelieu (Waltz).

Will the team accomplish whatever they were trying to do? Will they integrate a bunch of 2010s style 3D elements? Will an airship be shot at by an even bigger airship? You’ll just have to listen to find out!

Podcast: The Red Maple Leaf (2016)

Your Stupid Minds comes at you with our first foray into the filmography of Canadian auteur Frank D'Angelo. Off the heels of his infamous Sicilian Vampire, Frank brings back his menagerie of geriatric Hollywood stars to investigate the kidnapping of the American ambassador's daughter in 2016's The Red Maple Leaf.

The synopsis will be difficult since we suspect Frank locked in his cast before finishing the script, so there are big names with absolutely nothing to do whose scenes could have been excised entirely and it would have made the movie more coherent.

Special Agent Alfonso Palermo (D'Angelo) is the best detective in Canada. His wife (Mira Sorvino) and daughter (Addison Holley) are killed in a car accident that leaves him miraculously without so much as a bruise. He mourns their loss through binge drinking and working really hard (because he’s so good at his job).

When the U.S. Ambassador to Canada's (Michael Paré) daughter is kidnapped, Al is sent in to investigate. He immediately starts antagonizing the dad, since he had an affair before. Well, he of course turns out to be right and his infidelities are the cause of the kidnapping. But we don't know that until Frank ambles through the film lackadaisically talking to a series of octogenarian Oscar winners and nominees.

Featuring James Caan as a U.S. Senator, Kris Kristofferson as the President, Martin Landau as some driver, Paul Sorvino as Al's (not Mira Sorvino's) dad, Robert Loggia as some former governor, Doris Roberts as his wife, and Margot Kidder as his psychologist. Everyone I just mentioned is now deceased. Doris Roberts and Robert Loggia died before the movie came out. Among the alive stars includes Armand Assante, Eric Roberts, and Daniel Baldwin.

Podcast: Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

My god... this time around Your Stupid Minds covers the legacy sequel of 1996's biggest film. It's Independence Day: Resurgence, which was most definitely not 2016's biggest film. Starring Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Maika Monroe, and 3,800 other people (but not Mae Whitman).

We really have our work cut out for us when describing this plot. It's 20 years after the events of the last film. Earth has commandeered the alien technology and created a Federation-like utopia centered around how cool it was when we kicked those aliens' asses. President Lanford (Sela Ward) is on the verge of the event's anniversary celebration when our laser moon base spots an alien sphere approaching the planet. They immediately blast it and go to pick up the remains.

Meanwhile, as is custom for a Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin joint, there are more groups. There are the hotshot spaceship fighter pilots of Jake (Hemsworth), Dylan (Jessie T. Usher), the step-son of Will Smith's Steve Hiller in the first film, who is dead in this one, and some other people I don't have time to describe.

Jeff Goldblum is back as David Levinson. His ex-wife is missing but replaced with scientician Catherine (Charlotte Gainsbourg), some UN nerd (Nicolas Wright), and an African warlord who hunts aliens (Deobia Oparei). They're trying to solve the mystery of the sphere.

Judd Hirsch is back somehow. He survived a 10,000 foot tsunami in Florida and is now driving a 30 year old station wagon to Area 51 on one tank of gas. There are also some Irish seamen who are supposed to watch a big hole in the earth or something.

Brent Spiner is also back as Dr. Brakish Okun. He's been in a 20 year coma recovering from dying in the last movie. He's having a good time.

In any case, the sphere was some supercomputer that the bad aliens want. The humans use it as bait to lure the aliens and there is a cacophony of reused 2012 CGI assets as things go bang bang boom boom and the London eye falls into Buckingham Palace or whatever.

Stay tuned for the box office game and some fascinating IMDb trivia such as "the director wanted Will Smith to be in the movie" and "Liam Hemsworth didn't see the original movie when he was six years old."

Podcast: Inferno (2016)

Your Stupid Minds returns with loads of airport novel chills and spills in the third (and almost certainly final) entry in the Dan Brown Cinematic Universe (DBCU): 2016's Inferno.

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a hospital in Florence with amnesia. He must, with the assistance of a suspiciously helpful British doctor Sienna (Felicity Jones), piece together the last few days and figure out why people are shooting at him. It turns out evil billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) has created a virus to wipe out half of the earth’s population. Surely bringing the planet to 1975 levels of people will solve all our woes and not just delay them for a few decades!

Langdon must run through a series of tourist attractions and frantic cuts to uncover the clues to the location of the virus. Zobrist, the nerd that he is, has hidden its location in a series of antiquities related to Dante's Inferno. Langdon uses his skills as a Harvard symbologist and middle aged museum-enjoyer to piece the puzzle together.

Expect a series of twists and turns that you'd need to have brain damage not to foresee! Luckily Langdon does have brain damage, which makes his cluelessness slightly more believable.

Podcast: Hunt to Kill (2010)

Why should you listen to our latest episode? BECAUSE STONE COLD SAID SO! We’ve got 2010's Hunt to Kill starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, Eric Roberts (kinda), and various Vancouver-based character actors.

Jim Rhodes (Austin) is a U.S. Border Patrol agent about to assume a new desk job. When his partner Lee (Roberts) is killed in a botched meth lab raid (something Border Patrol does all the time), Rhodes moves to western Montana to be near a different border.

Rhodes's daughter Kim (Marie Avgeropoulos) is home on winter break and thinks her dad is cringe. When she's caught shoplifting, he must go down to the Sheriff's office to bail her out. Meanwhile, a team of the dumbest criminals of all time are betrayed by their leader (?) Lawson (Michael Hogan, Battlestar Galactica's Saul Tigh, and General Tullius from Skyrim for you Zoomers out there who love 13 year old games), who steals their stolen bonds and sets a bomb to explode. The team defuses the bomb, and now they're on the hunt to the Canadian border to catch their traitorous partner.

The team consists of the leader Banks (Gil Bellows), blonde lady Dominika (Emilie Ullerup), hacker Geary (Michael Eklund), karate guy Jensen (Gary Daniels), and hothead Crab (Adrian Holmes). To make a long story short, they go to the sheriff for info on Lawson before he sneaks across the northern border. Instead they end up killing him, kidnapping Kim, and taking Rhodes along to track Lawson. We now have a half dozen morons in the woods bickering with each other constantly, and Rhodes waiting for his opportunity to give all of these doofuses a Stone Cold Stunner and save his daughter. Everything goes south (or should I say, north) and Rhodes must resort to hunting to kill. Can I get a "hell yeah?"

Podcast: Assassin's Creed (2016)

It’s officially the Christmas season! Here we come a-wassailing! Here comes Santa Claus right down Santa Claus Lane! Jack Frost nipping at your nose. We’re reviewing Assassin’s Creed (2016).

Cal Lynch (Michael Fassbender) is a convicted murderer who is being put to death in the Texas desert prison outpost in Huntsville. As he’s executed, he wakes up in a strange facility in Madrid. Sofia (Marion Cotillard) explains that they need to hook him up to a giant GLaDOS-like mechanical arm so he can tap into the genetic memory of his ancestors, steal the Apple of Eden, which contains the genetic code for free will, and this will somehow solve violence. Makes sense to me!

Cal is apparently a descendant of a line of assassins who have been fighting the Knights Templar for generations, mostly for this Apple but for other stuff too. He meets other assassin descendants, who basically have nothing else to do but hang around this facility for a while. There is also the icy Rikkin (Jeremy Irons), the Gendo of this organization and father of Sofia, as well as Cal’s father (Brendan Gleeson) who he thinks killed his mother.

Can Cal, under his cool ancestor assassin name of Aguilar, recover the Apple and save the world or something? Or is this creepy shadowy organization using sense memory VR to force you to do cool flips in 15th century Spain not all it’s cracked up to be? You’ll have to listen to find out! Also, if you didn’t know, this is based on a video game.

Podcast: The Meg (2018)

In honor of Meg 2: The Trench bombing at the box office, we decided to take a look back at its more financially successful predecessor, 2018’s The Meg! What if Jaws, but bigger?

Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is a world-renowned underwater saving people guy. When he tries to rescue a submarine that was hit by something big (I’m guessing a Meg) he is unable to save everyone and is accused of cowardice. Jonas now hides in Thailand drowning his sorrows in low ABV beers.

Meanwhile, a research station funded by Muskian billionaire Morris (Rainn Wilson) is trying to discover an even deeper layer within the Mariana Trench. They discover the layer, but are hit by something big (I’m guessing a Meg) so they ask Jonas for help. Can they defeat the Meg, or will he eat the entire station? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Podcast: Dark Phoenix (2019)

Your Stupid Minds comes at you with our fifth X-Men related movie, this time it’s the 2019 flop Dark Phoenix, another halfhearted attempt to adapt the Dark Phoenix saga without bothering with the Phoenix saga.

The X-Men are assigned a mission by the president to save some astronauts stuck in space. Though the mission is successful, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is blasted with an evil space cloud that starts to make her act cool. However, the coolness goes too far when she can’t control her new power. She tries to learn more about her past, and comes across Magneto’s (Michael Fassbender) mutant island sanctuary of Genosha (though in this movie it looks like a small plot of land in western Connecticut).

Meanwhile, Vuk (Jessica Chastain), a shapeshifting alien of the D’Bari race, is looking for Jean so she can... take the power, harness the power, trick Jean into helping her? It isn’t entire clear. But she’s evil.

Can the X-Men save Jean, or will this conflict tear them apart? Will Disney reboot the franchise after their Fox acquisition? How many times can we predict the second part of every line in this movie? How much was Hans Zimmer paid for this killer score? You’ll have to listen to find out (though we don’t answer most of these questions).

Also a quick update: Your Stupid Minds will be at this year’s Comicpalooza in Houston, Texas, to discuss Halle Berry’s Catwoman LIVE! The convention is Memorial Day weekend, May 26-28, so come check us out!

Podcast: Geostorm (2017)

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It's time to Geostorm! After a one-week delay, we're back covering one of the worst movies about a global weather controlling satellite network of 2017, it's Geostorm, directed by frequent Roland Emmerich collaborator Dean Devlin.

Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) is a world famous satellite designer who is the creator of Dutch Boy, a satellite network tasked with controlling the weather to combat the ravages of climate change. His bad boy ways cause him to get kicked off the project, and his brother Max (Jim Sturgess) is put in charge.

But, Dutch Boy causes series of freak weather occurrences so Max asks his brother to go up to the International Space Station to investigate. It turns out these aren't glitches, but something more sinister. Also starring Andy Garcia as President Andrew Palma, Ed Harris as Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom who is definitely not the bad guy, and Abbie Cornish as Secret Service Agent Sarah Wilson.

Podcast: Dracula Untold (2014)

Your Stupid Minds covers one of the many movies leaving HBO Max at the end of the month in the platform’s effort pre-merger to make their streaming service really bad! This one isn't a huge loss though. It’s 2014’s Dracula Untold!

Vlad Drăculea (Luke Evans) is Prince of Wallachia and Transylvania and mostly a good dad and leader, despite some light impaling he’s done in the past. Sultan Mehmed II is leader of the Ottoman Empire and eyeing his territory, and also wants to take his son Ingeras (Art Parkinson) as a Janissary, so Vlad meets up with a disgusting vampire he met in a cave (Charles Dance) and strikes a deal with him to borrow his vampire powers for three days so he can kill the entire Turkish army and turn back into a human so long as he doesn’t feed.

Vlad’s wife Mierna (Sarah Gadon) is a little peeved he didn’t talk to her first, but eventually is okay with it and he tears through the Turkish army with his bat powers. Can he resist temptation and return to human form, or will he become a vampire forever? Obviously the latter, since Dracula is, like, a thing. So no mystery there.

Podcast: The Goldfinch (2019)

 

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Your Stupid Minds continues its ad hoc Worst of 2019 series with a big budget adaptation of a book that was not nearly as best-selling as the book: The Goldfinch! Starring a bevy of hot young male actors with incredibly silly names.

Theo Decker (Oakes Fegley) is a boy who is a victim in a terrorist attack targeting New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. His mother is killed in the blast and he goes to live with some WASP-y family friends. The matriarch Mrs. Barbour (Nicole Kidman) takes a liking to Theo, but he is whisked away by his deadbeat alcoholic gambling addicted dad Larry (Luke Wilson).

He moves outside Las Vegas and befriends an emo looking Ukrainian boy Boris (Finn Wolfhard). There is some time jumping to the present with Ansel Elgort as adult Theo. Something about a missing painting. A young homoerotic experience. A deadly yachting accident. An elaborate European art heist. Some other things too. It's really long.

Some Notes:

• Roger Deakins was the Director of Photography. So at least it looks nice!
• The film acts like The Goldfinch painting is the greatest thing ever created. Here is is. It's smaller than a piece of legal paper.
• Nicole Kidman looks fantastic.

Podcast: Between Worlds (2018)

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Your Stupid Minds continues its Worst of 2019 mini theme with a film that technically didn’t come out in 2019 (December of 2018) but also didn’t really come out anywhere, really. Nicolas Cage stars as another character named Joe in Maria Pulera's ghostly thriller dark comedy drama horror film Between Worlds.

Joe (Cage) is a widower Alabama truck driver whose wife and five-year-old daughter died tragically in a house fire. He comes across a woman named Julie (Run Lola Run’s Franka Potente) being choked out in a truck stop bathroom. He beats up the choker, but Julie explains the choking was consensual. She has a psychic ability to exist “between worlds” when she is near death. She needs to use her ability to rescue the soul of her daughter, who is in a coma after a motorcycle accident.

Joe and Julie start a relationship, but things are not what they seem as the recovering daughter Billie (Penelope Mitchell) begins acting stranger and hornier than usual.

Some Notes:

• Available on Netflix.
• Submitted by listener request. The listener writes: "Imagine a wealthy, cloistered Tina Belcher wrote an uncomfortably horny fake David Lynch film and had a fetish for giving Nic Cage embarrassing directions on set. That's basically this movie."
• This is the fourth time Nicolas Cage has played a character named "Joe." If IMDb rumors are correct, he will play a fifth Joe in an upcoming Joe Exotic miniseries.
• Yes, the Flop House Podcast just reviewed this movie a week ago. Let the record state we had no idea they were going to do that. We can prove it in a court of law.

Podcast: Serenity (2019)

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Your Stupid Minds enters the world of Baker Dill as part of its ad hoc Worst of 2019 series with the flop Serenity. Don’t worry nerds! We’re reviewing the other movie named Serenity that was a big flop. The one about fishing and step-dad revenge. Not Joss Whedon’s space opera.

Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is an island fisherman trying to catch a giant tuna named Justice. His high school sweetheart Karen (Anne Hathaway) finds him and offers $10 million to kill her abusive husband Frank (Jason Clarke), and Dill is conflicted. This is all I can say without giving away the big twist.

Some Notes:

• Available on Amazon Prime.
• If you play a video game just to smash boxes, we don't judge you.
• This episode is rated T for Teen.

Podcast: Sniper: Special Ops (2016)

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Your Stupid Minds reviews Sniper: Special Ops based solely on its horrific Photoshop Frankenstein DVD cover. And Steven Seagal is in it.

Jake (Seagal) is a 65-year-old elite Army sniper on a mission in Afghanistan (which has geography that in no way resembles Southern California) to save a kidnapped congressman. The squad leader Vic (Tim Abell) is also present, along with Vasquez, (wrestler Rob Van Dam) and some other people. Jake shoots two dudes with the sniper rifle, then it breaks and he never uses it again. One squad member is shot in the spine and unable to evacuate via the Humvee, so Jake stays with him out of the goodness of his heart (and not because leaving would require him to descend a number of stairs).

After the mission, the movie shifts completely to a story about a broken truck and a women with her child. There is also a plucky Lois Lane-like reporter Janet (Charlene Amoia). These storylines eventually converge, sort of, and Seagal stays seated for most of the movie.

Featured Music:
Crossing the Chasm by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3562-crossing-the-chasm
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Some Notes:

• Available on Netflix. 
• Some of Rob Van Dam's sweetest wrestling moves.
• The story about Gene LeBell choking out Steven Seagal until he pooped his pants.

Podcast: The Fanatic (2019)

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Your Stupid Minds enters 2020 with one of the worst of 2019: the John Travolta starring, Fred Durst directed movie out of time The Fanatic.

Moose (Travolta) is a Los Angeles resident obsessed with the past-his-prime action star Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa). He gets access to a premiere party only to discover he isn’t there. After multiple attempts to make contact, his friend Leah (Ana Golja) points him to an app that maps celebrities’ homes. He uses this opportunity to stalk Dunbar and do a bunch of other weird things.

Some Notes:

• In an inexplicable scene that stops the movie cold, "The Truth," a 15 year old Limp Bizkit song that no one knows, is featured prominently.
• Devon Sawa plays the celebrity at the center of a stalking. Sawa famously played the eponymous "Stan" in the Eminem music video.
• "All in the Family" by Korn featuring Fred Durst is the worst song of all time.

Podcast: A Very Nutty Christmas (2018)

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Your Stupid Minds celebrates the holiday season, nutcrackers, Lifetime movies, and incest-based coffee commercials with our latest episode of 2018’s A Very Nutty Christmas!

Kate Holiday (Melissa Joan Hart) is a woman who doesn’t dislike Christmas but is generally stressed out by it. She’s a baker and has to bake a lot of cookies for the holidays. After her actor/Santa boyfriend Mark (Ryan Caltagirone) dumps her, she acquires the original nutcracker toy which inspired the Nutcracker ballet.

Needless to say it comes to life as a hunky guy named Chip (played by the older brother of Simon from 7th Heaven) and they become boyfriend and girlfriend. He teaches her about the meaning of Christmas by saving her bakery while working on poverty wages and cracking a lot of nuts with his bare hands.

Some Notes:

• This movie has some very nutty IMDb accoutrement, including this trivia: "In the Lifetime movie Santa Con, Melissa Joan Hart and Barry Watson played siblings, here they play romantic interests." This inspired a conversation between Nick and Chris regarding the infamous Folgers Coffee incest commercial. Two days after the podcast recording, GQ published an extremely comprehensive oral history of said ad.
• IMDb Goofs: "When arriving at the theater, Kate is being repeatedly shushed by the audience while she's yelling at Chip, and she finally shushes the audience right back; at that moment an extra right behind her--a blonde lady wearing a pearl necklace--can't help herself but grin broadly and sweetly at Melissa, thereby breaking character: she, (along with the rest of the audience) is supposed to be very upset at Kate for yelling so much and disrupting the peace, but we can tell from that lady's sweet smile and tender look at the actress, that she was amused by how well Melissa performed her aggravation in that scene. This goof turned into a very cute moment."

Podcast: Twisted Pair (2018)

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We are back…. now for Your Stupid Minds’s 150th episode! Since we’ve gotten into the habit of releasing episodes featuring Neil Breen movies at fifty episode intervals (see: Fateful Findings, Double Down), we had to wait until Nick’s $30 standard definition DVD copy of his latest film, Twisted Pair, arrived via USPS from the Breen’s Las Vegas estate.

Neil Breen plays twins Cade and Cale Altair, who were taken by aliens at birth and imbued with AI Intelligence superpowers that make them jump really high and unconvincingly. They are returned to earth to a secret agency in order to protect stock footage soldiers from gif explosions. While Cade excels, Cale flounders and grows a fake beard.

Since this is where the voice over ends in the film, the rest of the synopsis gets a little hazy. Cade stalks a college campus at night, while Cale kidnaps evil corporate greed corporate business men and tortures them. The twins each have girlfriends who look remarkably similar in sparse lighting. Also starring Astro-Eagle and Brad Stein as Dectective (sic).

Some Notes:

• Also see our episode for I Am Here.... Now. It was not released at a fifty episode interval, but it's worth listening to nonetheless.
• Keep an eye out for some footage from I Am Here.... Now on the projected screen in the home theater, along with framed posters for the films Ultraviolet and Shark Tale.
• Trivia
• The beard that Cale wears is not actual facial hair that Neil Breen grew, but a hair-based prosthesis that Breen attached to his face.
• The rat that accompanies the homeless man on the college campus is not, in fact, a real rat, but a whole-rat prosthesis. A keen eye will note the "rat" does not move nor make noise for several seconds while on screen.
• Mr. Breen cannot, in fact, jump incredibly high. That effect was accomplished through the use of movie magic.
• Neil Breen and Astro-Eagle were both featured in the Marvel film Thor: The Dark World (2013), where Breen played Malekith and Astro-Eagle played himself.

Podcast: The Little Mermaid (2018)

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Your Stupid Minds starts a new life... under the sea! Just in time for DC Comics' aquatic superhero movie, and (probably) two years before Disney makes an embarrassing remake of The Little Mermaid, it's the Walgreens genetic brand The Little Mermaid! Armando Gutierrez is a "banker, political consultant, and entrepreneur," who decided he should also become a movie producer after producing and appearing in Walt Before Mickey, a film version of a negative bio of Walt Disney. Armando teamed up with Blake Harris (writer, 12 Dates of Christmas), to make a public domain version of the Little Mermaid!

A grandmother (Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine) tells a familiar story of mermaids to her doubting grand-kids. After they scoff at the idea of mermaids, she tells a story that for legal reasons is entirely new: in the early 1900s, handsome journalist Cam (William Moseley, Peter from Chronicles of Narnia) takes care of his niece Elle, who has a vague asthma-like ailment that she fancifully associates with being a mermaid.

Cam's boss tells him to go on assignment in Mississippi to investigate a mermaid and a circus selling a mermaid panacea. Cam doubts whether the story is true, even though it seems to directly relate to his own life. Will Cam fall in love with the mermaid? Will Elle get her mermaid-itis treated? Did I mention there are three other characters with super-powers in addition to the mermaid at this circus? Well, there are.

Welcome to Note-Vale:

• Armando and Blake are already on to their next project, Anastasia, where Armando will play Rasputin. Brandon Routh has been cast as Tsar Nicholas.
• Chris embarrassingly did not recognize Gina Gershon, star of Showgirls, Bound, Face/Off, etc. To the best of our knowledge, her only other film on the podcast is a cameo appearance in LOL, where she gets high with Demi Moore and real-life friend Fisher Stevens.
• When the Mermaid assumes mermaid form, she grows her scale bra back; this raises a lot of biologic questions that we need answered! Please write in if you have theories.

Podcast: The American Templars (2013)

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Near-fatal cat infections and paternity leave is over, so after a brief hiatus, we are back! Chris's recuperation involved a trip to scenic New England, where he saw an old building once owned by Benedict Arnold (great-grandfather of the guy you're thinking of). A Google Maps search revealed a strange museum dedicated to the building. Friend of the show Sarah Long (guest on American Strays,  .com for Murder) mentioned that the owner of the museum produced a movie! So we watched it!

Notent Notables:

• To the best of our knowledge, there isn't any method to impeach a witness's testimony by showing the witness is a homosexual. The cartoon villain Catholic bishop seems to disagree, literally using information learned in confessional to try to discredit a witness against him.
• Henry Sinclair was a Scottish guy born in 1345, an Earl and a vassal of the King of Norway. What this movie presupposes is: what if he's actually Jesus' secret great-grand-kid, *and* he took a boat to America in 1385 or so? And the prosecution of the Templars in 1307 was part of this cover-up of this guy being born thousands of miles away decades later. It's pretty obvious.
• The movie gets basic details of the history of American colonization wrong, and gives that dialogue to someone whose job is working for a historical society. 
• The handsomest man in the movie, hitman with a heart Salazar, seems to have a chance at "making it," as he was a major character in the video game prequel "Life is Strange: Before the Storm."
• If you are interested in this movie, it is available for rent on Amazon Prime.

Podcast: Gotti (2018)

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Your Stupid Minds reviews the movie that critics DON’T want you to see, the years-in-the-making pro mafia propaganda film starring a dimming Hollywood star: Gotti!

John Travolta assumes the titular role in some of the best wig work of his career. John Gotti is a low-level goon in the Gambino crime syndicate who gets the opportunity to move up the ranks through a targeted assassination. He kills the guy but completely borks the killing and goes to jail for the crime. He spends the rest of the movie in and out of prison, squinting and assuming a horrible accent, yelling at his kids, yelling at his underlings, telling horrible jokes, killing his boss in an unsanctioned hit, being the boss for a while, and dying in prison. The movie determines this man is a hero.

Also starring Travolta’s wife Kelly Preston as scenery-chewing Victoria Gotti, and Spencer Rocco Lofranco as John Gotti Jr., which the movie inexplicably becomes about after Gotti Sr.’s death. Since Gotti Jr. consulted heavily on the film, the entire experience reads like a love letter to poorly implemented and flamboyantly executed crime, without actually showing what the mob does to earn money. Directed by Kevin Connolly (E from Entourage) with a disjointed mix of voice over, flash back, and 30 second nonsense scenes that go nowhere.

Some Notes:

• Pitbull inexplicably wrote and performed an entire custom soundtrack, complete with references to Miami and smears against Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
• In a collection of scenes interspersed throughout the movie, John Travolta plays an old, bald, wrinkly Gotti dying in prison. We're 100% convinced Travolta is not wearing makeup nor a bald cap.
• Chapo Trap House reviewed the movie a few weeks ago. Though we are both devoted Grey Wolves, we deliberately avoided listening to their episode until after it was recorded. Any similar riffs are purely coincidental.