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PODCAST

The Movies

I"m Daniel Berrios. This is my journey to learn about the movies - the art form I adore - one review, interview, editorial at a time. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. All of us keep the movies alive.

tv & film film reviews

All Episodes

00:33:45

S4E66. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 15: MOTEL HELL...

The Movies ·

2025/10/21

MOTEL HELL arrived only months after FRIDAY THE 13TH, poised to be regarded as merely another slasher imitator looking to cash a quick buck. However, Kevin Connor's horror-comedy, penned by brothers Robert & Steven-Charles Jaffe, deceptively avoided the pitfalls of its contemporaries. This movie, about a farmer and motel owner (Rory Calhoun) killing wayward travelers to grind into the blend for his famous smoked meats, dives into psychedelia, satire, even thoughtful discussions regarding

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00:24:43

S4E65. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 14: POSSESSION...

The Movies ·

2025/10/19

*Apologies for the audio: I tried recording in the car & tweaked the sound as best as possible.*POSSESSION is simply a feel-bad movie. Andrzej Zulawski's chaotic magnum opus of divorce, abuse and horny tentacled fucks has to be seen to be believed. For those who grew up with Sam Neill as the heroic Dr. Alan Grant in JURASSIC PARK, prepare to have your childhood chewed up, spit out and bombed. This is a movie I don't often understand but within its swirling camera movements, frenetic

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00:21:15

S4E64. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 13: THE MONSTER...

The Movies ·

2025/10/17

THE MONSTER SQUAD brings the Universal Monsters of yore into the '80s with a healthy dose of sugar-blasted cereal and unmedicated ADHD. Directed by Fred Dekker (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS) & written by both Dekker and Shane Black (THE NICE GUYS, LETHAL WEAPON, KISS KISS BANG BANG, most of your favorite movies ever), this combined family drama, top-notch makeup effects and preteen comedy with unapologetic horror. Dracula calls a 5-year-old girl a bitch, because of course, he would? As was done to

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00:24:33

S4E63. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 12: SCARY MOVIE...

The Movies ·

2025/10/14

SCARY MOVIE is a staple of my childhood, an entryway into horror movies during a time where I wasn't allowed to watch most of them.It's a time capsule, for better and worse, of the late '90s/early '00s sense of humor & general fatigue regarding the slew of teen slashers riding SCREAM's coattails.This was my intro to the Wayans Bros, Regina Hall, Marlon Wayans, Shannon Elizabeth during their own first Hollywood at-bats, before Hall would act for Paul Thomas Anderson &

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00:23:36

S4E62. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 11: WE ARE STILL...

The Movies ·

2025/10/13

WE ARE STILL HERE occupies a crossroads in the horror genre: that of the '70s & '80s-inspired supernatural chillers, the gorefests from guys like Lucio Fulci and the patient character studies of grief popularized in the '10s (anything A24 would touch).These elements shouldn't work so well together but I guess when you got a horror nerd like Ted Geoghegan writing and directing, it simply does.Paul and Anne Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig & Barbara Crampton) have just suffered the

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00:25:26

S4E61. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 10: IT'S THE GREAT...

The Movies ·

2025/10/12

We're 10 days into the 31 Days of Halloween and I feel like we need a palate cleanser. Recently, we've been talking about reanimating dead bodies, torturous twins, eating warm pizza off of cold corpses. I think it's time we take the holiday back to a more innocent, nostalgic time, where we only concern ourselves with what costume we're gonna wear and how much candy we can score.IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN is a 1966 TV special directed by José Cuauhtémoc "Bill"

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00:37:00

S4E60. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 9: GOODNIGHT MOMMY...

The Movies ·

2025/10/10

GOODNIGHT MOMMY is the feature debut of aunt-nephew duo Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala (THE LODGE, THE DEVIL'S BATH). Patient, tense and psychologically disturbed, this movie drew me in and kept me guessing all the way to the end.Twin brothers Lukas and Elias (Lukas & Elias Schwarz) live in pastoral Germany, spending their summer days exploring pitch-black tunnels, bouncing on trampolines during rainstorms, harboring any stray cat or gigantic cockroach who happens to cross their path -

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00:26:20

S4E59. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 8: THE INVITATION...

The Movies ·

2025/10/09

In Karyn Kusama's THE INVITATION, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) is invited to his ex-wife Eden's (Tammy Blanchard) dinner party in the Hollywood Hills after two years of radio silence following the accidental death of their 5-year-old son.Returning to his old home and stepping back into his son's room conjures the guilt and pain Will's tried to bury for two years. Eden, however, not only seems to be unbothered by this but never acknowledges the awkwardness or sorrow of the

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00:30:06

S4E58. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 7: THE SLUMBER...

The Movies ·

2025/10/09

After a long week of watching Halloween movies, it's good to grab some friends, get cozy in your pajamas, munch on a pizza, sip some beer, smoke some weed and settle into a slumber party. If you're lucky, it might even be a slumber party MASSACRE!1982's THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, directed by Amy Holden Jones, is one of my all-time favorites: a clever satire on slasher flicks through the female gaze. When a slumber party hosted by a group of teen girls is crashed by a drill-wielding

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00:42:22

S4E57. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 6: FRANKENHOOKER...

The Movies ·

2025/10/09

Donate to the Go-Fund-Me for Gabe Bartalos here.---Just cause I've wrapped up the Universal Monsters series doesn't mean I'm quite yet done with the classics! Frank Henenlotter takes his goofy and gaudy turn with the FRANKENSTEIN story in his 1990 opus FRANKENHOOKER.This movie sees Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) as certifiably cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs after the accidental death of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen). Obsessed with using his self-taught medical and surgical

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00:28:22

S4E56. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 5: CREATURE FROM...

The Movies ·

2025/10/07

Today, we're wrapping up the Universal Monsters with CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON! The Monsterverse jumps into the Atomic Age of the '50s as a group of scientists/archeologists venture on a fossil-finding expedition in the Amazon. What are they looking for? An evolutionary missing link between animals of the sea and land, teased by a webbed long-fingered claw found in a cliff face.But this undisturbed lagoon holds on to its ecological history much longer than expected. The Gill-Man breathes the past

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00:21:39

S4E55. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 4: THE WOLF MAN...

The Movies ·

2025/10/05

---Follow, rate and review THE MOVIES wherever you listen to podcasts!

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00:21:49

S4E54. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 3: THE MUMMY (1932)...

The Movies ·

2025/10/04

🎶 On the 3rd Day of Halloween, my true love gave to me a stone knife to the stomach and promises of eternal life as a mu-mmy 🎶1932's THE MUMMY sees Boris Karloff (now marketed as KARLOFF THE UNCANNY after FRANKENSTEIN's success) as an ancient Egyptian sorcerer, revived after 3,000 years with a mission to revive his love, Princess Anck-es-en-amon.How? No big deal. He's just going to find the last woman (Zita Johann) in the princess' bloodline, kill her, plug in the princess' soul and play beloved

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00:33:28

S4E53. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 2: FRANKENSTEIN...

The Movies ·

2025/10/02

*God, if I can somehow get Clancy Brown to introduce this show, it'd be beautiful but now, you'll just have to imagine his deep, rich voice* DAY 2! GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 2, EVERYONE!31 Days of Halloween continues down the Universal Monsters track. Not even a year after DRACULA's release, wunderkind producer Carl Laemmle Jr. comes back swinging with FRANKENSTEIN, a James Whale-directed adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel.Bela Lugosi is interested in returning. Junior is stoked! Lugosi reads the script

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00:30:16

S4E52. 31 Days of Halloween - Day 1: DRACULA (1931)...

The Movies ·

2025/10/01

Merry October, you beautiful people! For a holiday as fun as Halloween, who has the right to limit the party to one day? No-fucking-body.That's why on THE MOVIES, I'm celebrating for 31 straight days. This project allows me to further dig down the rabbit hole of my favorite genre, horror, discovering subterranean weird-ass, BARBARIAN-esque detours I've yet to witness. Hold my hand and don't let go. For this entire month, we're gonna get scary.How better to start this bacchanalia of blood than with

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01:03:27

S4E51. Best Picture Showcase: NICKEL BOYS dir. RaMell...

The Movies ·

2025/09/25

NICKEL BOYS is one of a kind. That's not to say the narrative is brand-new. Two Black teens struggling to keep their sanity while stuck in an abusive institution brings to mind ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, THE GREAT ESCAPE, the millennial cinematic classic HOLES.But where NICKEL BOYS differs, as the great Roger Ebert wrote, is in HOW it's about what it's about. The camera is an extension of the main characters, their first-person perspective. But unlike other films that've

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00:40:56

S4E50. DROP Blu-ray Review (2025) dir. Christopher...

The Movies ·

2025/08/20

DROP follows Violet (Meghann Fahy), a widow/single mom going on her first date after the violent death of her abusive husband.All looks promising across the dinner table: Henry (Brendon Sklenar) is a charming, attractive, thoughtful guy. He's a photographer for the mayor. He bought a trinket for her 5-year-old. He's got a good wit. Perfect first outing, right?The problem lies in Violet's' phone. She's receiving these anonymous airdrops from someone in the restaurant. What starts

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02:12:02

S4E49. In Four Films: Megan Loucks

The Movies ·

2025/06/20

Film critic Megan Loucks, better known as Wonder Meg, comes on THE MOVIES to share who she is using only four films. The Lansing, Michigan native and I chat about an encyclopedia of topics: motherhood, growing up in a tight-knit family, the Snyder Cut fandom (Meg co-founded Justice Con, an virtual charity convention that brought together Snyder Cut, DCEU, and comic book fans to raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), a lifelong devotion to fantasy stories, pillow fort

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00:25:31

S4E48. THE WOMAN IN THE YARD Blu-ray Review (2025)...

The Movies ·

2025/06/17

Thanks once again to Universal Pictures Home Entertainment for shipping me a review Blu-ray copy of THE WOMAN IN THE YARD!This has been a good way to catch up on movies I missed in the theaters. The teaser for this movie sucked me in right away because it's simple: a family living at a farm house, with no neighbors as far as the eye can see and almost as far as the foot can walk...but then they see a creepy veiled woman, dressed in all black, sitting at the end of the driveway.There's the

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00:35:00

S4E47. Interview | TORNADO Director John Maclean

The Movies ·

2025/06/15

I interviewed John Maclean, the director of the coming-of-age samurai revenge movie TORNADO. The titular character is a teenage girl (Koki) avenging her father's murder at the hands of a band of thieves led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden).I swear I didn't mean for this episode to drop on Father's Day but it feels appropriate. The movie features two sets of father and child struggling with communication and good old-fashioned rebellion. It doesn't matter

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