Podcast: Hidden Strike (2023)

What do you get when you combine Jackie Chan, John Cena, Euron Greyjoy, six Chinese production companies, AND the 2013 winner of the China division championship of the Miss Bikini of the Universe pageant? Why 2023's Hidden Strike, of course!

Dragon Luo (Chan) is the legendary leader of a private security company tasked with rescuing the kidnapped Chinese workers of an oil refinery in Iraq. For whatever reason his estranged daughter Luo Mei (Ma Chunrui) is also there, but she hates him because, like Gunner, he was busy being cool in some far off conflict zone instead of bonding with her after her mother's death.

Meanwhile, ex-special forces soldier Chris Van Horne (Cena) is just kind of hanging around a Middle Eastern village entertaining children and feeling kinda bad about American military adventurism abroad. In an attempt to get water or something for the village, he teams up with some terrorists/mercenaries in this plot to kidnap the refinery workers.

After 40 solid minutes of deadly serious action intrigue and ripoffs of Mad Max: Fury Road set pieces, Cena and Chan finally meet up and remember that they're both funny. The film shifts wildly into an action buddy comedy and stays that way. We liked the second half way more than the first. Plus there are bloops at the end!

Podcast: Kraven the Hunter (2024)

We finally did it! After months of promises we finally got around to covering the (probably) last of Sony's Spider-Man-less Spider-Man movies. It's 2024's Kraven the Hunter, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, and Russell Crowe.

After a cold open action sequence in a Russian prison that serves as Aaron Taylor-Johnson's sizzle reel for his Bond audition, we are transported to the distant past of probably around 2012. Sergei (Taylor-Johnson) and Dmitri (Fred Hechinger, the Tim Robinson-looking fellow who played Caracalla in Gladiator II) Kravinoff are taken out of boarding school by their mob boss father Nicoli (Crowe) after their mother's suicide. The best healing can only be done once they hunt down a lion serial killer in the savanna named Zar.

Unfortunately, Zar gets the drop on Sergei and he's horribly mauled. However, the lion's blood, combined with a magic potion administered by passer-by Calypso (DeBose) brings him back to life AND gives him Captain America-level superpowers. He leaves home and heads to Siberia to murder poachers and hone his skills.

Years later, Dmitri is kidnapped by rival mob boss Aleksei (Alessandro Nivola) a.k.a. the Rhino, who he got a surgical procedure to turn into a rhino man unless he's constantly pumping anti-rhino venom into his body through a backpack. Sergei, now going by Kraven, goes off on a series of expensive-looking adventures to save him.

Can Kraven save his brother in time? Who's really behind this kidnapping? And, most importantly, when does Kraven get his VEST? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: The Return of Swamp Thing (1989)

Tubi? Jim Wynorski? Comic book movie? Sometimes I think we parody ourselves. Your Stupid Minds comes to you this time around with 1989's The Return of Swamp Thing, starring Heather Locklear, Louis Jourdan and Wynorski muse Monique Gabrielle.

Picking up after the events of the last movie, as best we can surmise Swamp Thing killed Dr. Anton Arcane (Jourdan) but it didn't take, since he specializes in Ra's al Ghul style immortality practices. So Swamp Thing, a.k.a. Alec Holland, wanders around the Louisiana bayou campily beating up monsters and cajun caricatures. It vaguely resembles Alan Moore's run of the comic; as if someone recited major plot points from memory to the screenwriters while they watch TV.

Meanwhile, Abby Arcane (Locklear) goes to her step-father's swamp compound in some vague attempt to learn more about her dead mother. She's met by Dr. Arcane's menagerie of 80s misfits: buxom British scientist Dr. Lana Zurrell (Sarah Douglas), asthmatic other scientist Dr. Rochelle (Ace Mask, who as far as we know is not a homunculus assembled from Jim Carrey movie titles) and mercenary Miss Poinsettia (Gabrielle).

There's some plot point about using Abby's blood to create an immortality serum (since she has the "exact genetic code" of her mother, which is not how genetics work). Meanwhile some crawfish-fed local youths try to snap a picture of Swamp Thing using their dad's $5,000 camera.

Will Swamp Thing save the day? Will he and Abby have sex after hallucinating off a flower he picked off his body? Can Swamp Thing drive a Jeep? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: Belly of the Beast (2003)

One night in Bangkok makes a soft man mumble! Your Stupid Minds heads to Thailand and returns to the Steven Seagal well with one of his transitional films from theatrical to direct-to-video. It's 2003's Belly of the Beast!

Jake Hopper (Seagal) is an ex-CIA agent whose daughter Jessica (Sara Malakul Lane) is kidnapped by... some group in Thailand. They also, coincidentally, kidnap her friend Sara (Elidh MacQueen), who happens to be the daughter of a United States Senator which sparks a covert international incident.

Hopper tells his dead wife goodbye and immediately plods off to Southeast Asia to find his daughter. The CIA suspects the Islamic fundamentalist group Abu Karaf is behind the kidnapping, but Hopper, based on nothing, already knows it isn’t them. He takes some time to beat up a group of aggro young men menacing sex worker Lulu (Monica Lo), who immediately starts following Hopper around like a lost puppy. He also stops off at a Buddhist temple to meet up with his former partner Sunti (Byron Mann) and boost his mysticism stats in order to fend off Buddhist voodoo from an evil monk, who Hopper also knows about somehow.

What follows is a series of competently directed action set pieces from veteran Hong Kong director Ching Siu-tung. Apparently Ching disagreed with Seagal about how the fight scenes should be directed; Ching wanted them to be interesting and dynamic, while Seagal wanted them to be bad and boring. Ching won this fight and the result is lots of fluid action with coverage of Seagal brought in only when absolutely necessary. The wrapping around these action scenes is a bunch of spy intrigue mumbo jumbo, goofy mysticism, and dialogue where Seagal can show off the phonetic Thai he learned five minutes before the shoot.

Will Hopper find his daughter? Is Abu Karaf behind it? Is this jacked glistening general with a British accent the real bad guy? You’ll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: Future Kick (1991)

Your Stupid Minds searches through the depths of Tubi to find a Roger Corman low budget direct to video dystopian cyborg film. It's 1991's Future Kick, starring Meg Foster, Chris Penn, and Don 'The Dragon' Wilson.

It's the far-off future of 2025. Earth is ravaged by environmental disaster. Los Angeles is in ruins. Governments have collapsed and been replaced by mega-corporations. So absolutely nothing like our present.

Howard (Jeff Pomerantz) is a rich guy who lives on the moon who creates interactive virtual reality stories. His wife Nancy (Foster) tries one out before his trip down to earth. During his earth trip, a woman reveals that New Body, one of those aforementioned mega-corporations, is murdering people and harvesting their organs. This is all done with the help of Hynes (Ed Lottimer), a psychotic killer with giant Vega-like blades on his hand. Hynes murders him, and Nancy must come down to earth to solve his murder.

Meanwhile, Walker (Wilson) is a Cyberon, one of ten experimental cyborgs hunted down by earth's paramilitary police. He's the last of his kind, and makes his way turning in bounties and wearing cool sunglasses.

Will Walker help Nancy solve her husband's murder? Did Corman reuse some old space battle footage? Will there be a completely embarrassing twist at the end? You'll have to listen to find out!

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: Gunner (2024)

We’re a movin' and a groovin' into 2025 with a low budget direct-to-something action film starring Morgan Freeman and the third Hemsworth brother Luke. It's 2024's Gunner!

Lee Gunner (Hemsworth) is a special forces veteran Medal of Honor recipient returning home from Afghanistan after four tours to his home town of Clinton in the state of The South. After stumbling upon a drug lab in the forest, his two sons Luke (Grant Feely) and Travis (Connor DeWolfe) are kidnapped by a gang led by Dobbs Ryker (Mykel Shannon Jenkins), son of imprisoned drug lord Kendrick (Freeman).

Using his special forces training, hundreds of smoke bombs, and extremely jarring music cues, Gunner whizzes past stock After Effects CGI muzzle flashes to rescue his boys. How will be save his boys, and can he recover the truckloads of fentanyl the DEA seized in the process? Can he reconcile a broken relationship with his sons and vaguely Eastern European ex-wife Claire (Yulia Klass)? You’ll just have to listen to find out!