This week, we’re kicking the show off with a brief conversation about The Last of Us Part II, plus some listener feedback about political ideologies informing our film reviews. Then we kick off the week’s new releases with Miss Juneteenth, a recent Sundance family drama starring Nicole Beharie. We also fasten our seatbelts for a review of 7500, a claustrophobic hijacking thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his first film role since 2016. Will shares his thoughts on the new Netflix spy thriller Wasp Network, which has a huge cast including Penélope Cruz, Ana de Armas, Édgar Ramirez, and more. And we finish the show out with a drive-in feature called Infamous, which stars Bella Thorne and Jake Manley.
Music in this week’s episode: “carolina” by soho.
Show Notes:
- 00:00:00 – Will Cheated
- 00:02:10 – Intro & Off-Topics
- 00:04:55 – The Last of Us Part II
- 00:10:00 – Listener feedback: should movie reviews be political?
- 00:24:25 – Miss Juneteenth
- 00:32:50 – 7500
- 00:54:30 – Wasp Network
- 01:03:05 – Infamous
Links and Important stuff:
- Follow us on Twitter: Jon Negroni, Will Ashton.
- Check out our Patreon to support Cinemaholics!
- Don’t forget to review and rate the show on Apple Podcasts
- Email your feedback to cinemaholicspodcast [at] gmail.com. You might just hear your email read on next week’s episode!
- Like Cinemaholics on Facebook and Twitter.
- Check out our YouTube channel for full episodes and excerpts from the archives.
I actually think it’s laughable for someone to criticize you and Will for being too “political.” Clearly this person looks at politics as sports teams instead of a spectrum. I’ve listened to you guys for a good while now and you’re far from being “ultra liberal progressives,” and I’m saying that as someone who is pretty conservative. I’ve had to unsubscribe from other podcasts that bring up Trump in every review (seriously it’s just exhausting) so I think this listener needs some perspective, or they just haven’t been listening to Cinemaholics for longer than 5 minutes.
I think it’s cool you both addressed this person’s negative review of the show in good faith, even though it sort of appears they didn’t do the same in the first place (I mean come on, you guys do not do “reviews for the partisan” that is a plain joke). At the same time, I believe you might be overthinking one person’s aversion to hearing someone express political views they don’t share once in a while. Like Jon said, it’s about maturity. It takes being an adult to realize that people you don’t agree with 100% sometimes have opinions and insights worth valuing, so you don’t have to put pressure on them to hide their true beliefs to make you feel better. Just my two cents.
First of all, I love Cinemaholics. You guys put on a consistently entertaining and thought-provoking film review show every week, and I sincerely believe it’s one of the best being offered right now. But please don’t modify your reviews to suit the whims of a single commenter who thinks you need to both-sides your honest take on a movie. If anything, you two already seem to approach films in a pretty fair way to all types of people who might like something for different reasons, and you definitely don’t delve into politics too much for it to be considered a real factor in your final grades. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just whining, if you ask me. People really need to stop acting like it’s a bad thing to choose a side on an issue and stick to it.
Should movies be political? I guess not, but I’m not even sure what that means. After listening to you two talk about it, I almost forgot for a second which podcast I was listening to, because it’s a fair criticism for several other film review shows I won’t mention here out of politeness. Not so for you two. Sure, there have been times when I’ve rolled my eyes a little at something one of you might say about politics (I lean a little bit more right on most things, left on some others). But I can’t think of a single time I ever heard you guys give a pass on a movie just because it had some liberal message you liked. The closest, maybe, is something like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, but it’s not like you two criticized the film, praised its pro-choice narrative, then gave it an A. You praised multiple aspects of the film and explained what you got out of its message. I would expect the same for a conservative film critic reviewing a Clint Eastwood film.