Alternate Ending - Movie Review Podcast

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it.

It's been almost two months since the last time we went long on Star Trek - very long! - and clearly that can't stand. So Brian joins Mandy this week to force her to watch the one Star Trek movie that she famously has no recollection of having watched, 2016's Star Trek Beyond. Will Mandy join Brian in anointing this one of the very best movies in the franchise's history? Will she at least remember the experience this time? Are they going to resist the urge to re-run the conversation from September? You'll have to listen to find out!

Dedicated to the memory of Walter Koenig and Patrick Stewart

We've got a jam-packed month of movies coming our way in November, and Tim is joined by Cameron and Brian in a long fight to talk about as many of them as we possibly can, from Oscarbait to trashy children's movies. Before the main event, Brian catches up with the video animation Aztec Batman, while Tim has been tasked by Patreon supporter emob to watch the absolutely wild Italian horror movie Amok Train AKA Beyond the Door III AKA Amok Train: Fahrts in Nichts AKA... well, it's an Italian film, so AKA a lot of things. Cameron has taken up the slack of watching a big new release, looking at a quasi-documentary that calls into question the basics of documentary form and meaning-making with deadpan cringe comedy. No, the other one, John Wilson's The History of Concrete.

Tim and Brennan kick off a unit on horror movies adapted from comic books with the urtext of modern superhero movies, 1998's BLADE!

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Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

Happy early Halloween from Alternate Ending! This week's episode finds Gavin and Caleb using the long, long-delayed release of the uncut version of Ken Russell's The Devils, a controversial masterpiece about a witch panic, to take a deep dive into cinematic depictions of witches: what defines a witch, why are so many of the best witches in non-horror, and how far we can go in trying to fit non-witches into a witch-shaped box. With both Tim and Brennan distracted by other spooky season obligations, Gavin and Caleb welcome Dan Stalcup and Brian Terrill, co-hosts of The Goods: A Film Podcast. Thanks to Dan and Brian for swinging by, and welcome to the Alternate Ending extended family! To kick off the episode, Caleb brings the new Korean genre-bender Hope to the movie roundtable, while Dan checks out the recent The Rivals of Amziah King. Brian goes back to 1947 for the original Nightmare Alley, and Gavin wraps the roundtable by sputting wrathfully about the divisive new flop Digger.

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it.

In 2003, a singular man made a singular movie, bursting with a singular magic that terrible movie lovers were not sure could ever be replicated. October brings us a special YMR, as regular contributor Zev Burrows joins Mandy to talk about a highly anticipated film in the AE community: Big Shark (2023), Tommy Wiseau's twenty-years-later follow-up to The Room. Swim along with us in the Great White-infested Mississippi River as Mandy and Zev discuss whether that special Wiseau lightning struck twice, the ways in which Tommy Wiseau has genuinely grown as a filmmaker since his astonishing debut, and whether or not Zev should score Tommy's next movie (the answer is obviously yet). You don't want to miss this one; it will definitely occupy your brain forever.

Awards season is revving up, and so is scary movie season, though in keeping with the past few years, October is marked by an odd paucity of horror movies. But the month still has quite a lot coming out, and to help carve your way through it, Brennan is joined by Brian Fowler and Zev Burrows for an overview of all five weekends of wide releases in the next month. Before that, Zev brings the Ida Lupino film noir masterpiece The Hitch-Hiker to the movie roundtable, while Brennan catches up with the new Resident Evil. Brian, meanwhile, explores new frontiers in roundtabling, by bringing our first-ever video game to the conversation: the brand-new Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave.

Catch up with Zev's latest album here and here.

Tim and Brennan close out their unit on slasher movies by exploring the giddy madness of DOOM ASYLUM!

Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Instagram and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd

Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

We do like talking here at Alternate Ending, so what could be a more natural subject than speeches, soliloquies, and other long-winded exercises in talking until you're all talked out? The team turns their attention to the history and phenomenology of monologues this week, with Tim joined by Brian Fowler and topic sponsor Andrew Milne to share some of our favorite examples of the form, along with a bit of acting theory and a good old-fashioned (very old-fashioned) rant about how sound ruined cinema. For the movie roundtable, Andrew takes a look at classic sci-fi/horror B-picture It! The Terror from Beyond Space, while Brian goes much more contemporary with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Courtesy of regular guest and Patreon support Caleb Wimble, Tim takes a long wallow in stylish filth, with Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion.

September 8 is the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Star Trek on U.S. television, and to celebrate the franchise reaching this grand old age, Tim is joined by fellow Trek enthusiasts Mandy and Josh Albert, formerly of At Least There's a Dog: A Star Trek: Enterprise Episode Review Podcast. Three old-school Trekkers getting into the franchise turned out to be more than we could fit into just one episode (or under four total hours), so we have here Alternate Ending's first two-part episode. In Part II, the trio covers the series's theatrical releases, and its 2017 resurrection under the highly dubious oversight of hack extraordinaire Alex Kurtzman. Check out Part I here!

September 8 is the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Star Trek on U.S. television, and to celebrate the franchise reaching this grand old age, Tim is joined by fellow Trek enthusiasts Mandy and Josh Albert, formerly of At Least There's a Dog: A Star Trek: Enterprise Episode Review Podcast. Three old-school Trekkers getting into the franchise turned out to be more than we could fit into just one episode (or under four total hours), so we have here Alternate Ending's first two-part episode. In Part I, the trio goes over the TV side of Trek from its '60s cheese origins to its pinnacle of popularity in the 1990s and the decline of its fortunes in the early years of the 21st Century. Part II will go live tomorrow, on September 9 2026!

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it. This month, Mandy welcomes podcast first-timer Jacob Birkinshaw to discuss mother! (lowercase first letter and exclamation point required), darren! aronofsky!'s notorious 2017 psychological horror movie!, box-office bomb!, and painstaking allegory for something! It's widely agreed that mother! is the point at which aronofsky! vanished irretrievably while spelunking inside his own intestines!, but mandy! and jacob! are here to ponder whether or not that's actually a good thing! Tune in for a deep, intense, and multilayered discussion! of what exactly the hell darren! thinks he's doing here, why jlaw!'s performance deserves much more appreciation, and why this may be the most relatable aronofsky! joint! of them all. Follow jacob! on letterboxd! if you'd like more of his opinions.

Summer ends and fall has not yet begun, and Brennan is joined by Brian and Caleb in a valiant attempt to find out if anything opening in September is going to be worth a damn. The answer turns out to be "not really", but at least it gives you a chance to see The Odyssey on IMAX again. Before diving into the preview, the gang shares some things they've watched recently in the movie roundtable: Brian follows in the footsteps of this month's Your Movie Rocks by revisiting 2023's Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, while Brennan and Caleb both take the multiplex to see The End of Oak Street and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Tim and Brennan's next 1980s slasher movie is a sorority classic, THE INITIATION!

Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Instagram and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd

Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

For our second episode of August 2026, Tim and Brian have found themselves all along in the recording studio, and with nobody else to stop them, they inevitably made a beeline for the filmography of Ingmar Bergman. Specifically, they're talking about the thee films the great director made between 1961 and 1963: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence. Alternate Ending's two resident Bergman nuts go long on the status of the three films as a contested trilogy, and their status in the director's filmography. Before the main event, Tim adds to our developing conversation from two weeks ago on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, while Brian checks in with the record-setting box office behemoth Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Tim also catches up with the 1987 French sci-fi animation Gandahar, thanks to Patreon supporter and regular podcast guest Andrew Milne.

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it.

August marks the 16th anniversary of the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which isn't actually the reason that Gavin - appearing for the third time on Your Movie Rocks! - selected it. Rather, it's because he wanted to give Mandy a movie she was undoubtedly going to love for the third time in a row, following Agora and Lawrence of Arabia. Something like that, anyway. Together, Mandy and Gavin discuss the turbulent career of director Edgar Wright, the evolving careers of the jam-packed cast of the film, and the narrative logic of video games, as well as finding out if Mandy shares Gavin's enthusiasm for this generational nerd touchstone.

While The Odyssey rages on as the event film of the summer and Spider-Man: Brand New Day prepares to make just the silliest amountof money, August waits in the wings to end the summer with a squishy thud. Tim returns for his first monthly preview in several months to stare down the bleakness, and he's helped by guests Cameron Shaw and Caleb Wimble. Before diving into the preview, Caleb and Cameron share their thoughts on that same Odyssey, before kicking off our usual movie roundtable: Cameron catches up with the Arthurian classic Excalibur from 1981, while Caleb checks out the new release She's the He. Courtesy of Patreon supporter Christophe Romain, meanwhile, Tim tracks down the 2004 Belgian prizewinner Steve + Sky.

To kick off a summer unit on 1980s slashers, Tim and Brennan review the iconically kooky Spanish giallo riff PIECES!

Love the Podcast? Leave us a review! Follow Brennan on Instagram and Letterboxd Follow Tim on Letterboxd

Support Alternate Ending and check out our member perks, including voting for the films we cover on this program, via the Alternate Ending Patreon page!

The presumptive biggest film of summer, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is right around the corner, and we're greeting it with a extra-large episode with an extra-large cast. Brennan is joined by Brian Fowler, Andrew Milne, and Caleb Wimble to take a look at the history of our friendly neighborhood superhero dating all the way back to the 1970s, right up to the current run of megablockbusters. Before tackling the amazing webslinger, the movie roundtable that kicks off the episode is jam-packed with new releases, as Andrew is thrilled to catch up with The Furious, Caleb has a surprisingly warm response to Toy Story 5, Brennan praises Carolina Caroline, and Brian didn't hate Supergirl.

Welcome to Your Movie Rocks, an Alternate Ending podcast hosted by Mandy Albert. For every episode, Mandy will watch a movie assigned by her guest host, followed by a lively discussion. There's only one rule: no matter what the movie does to her, Mandy is only allowed to love it.

This month, we welcome back our first three-time player Andrew Milne, who has once again selected a movie that neither Mandy nor most of our listeners ever would have sought out on their own: Imaginaerum, an 85-minute music video for Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish. Come along on a wild CGI roller coaster ride as Mandy and Andrew gamely try to pronounce "Imaginaerum," gamely avoid pronouncing most other Finnish names, and get into deep subjects like death, aging, memory, and scary snowmen. Also, we have a digression on sexy blood-red dresses.

The Alternate Ending team is trying to beat the heat during this sweltering summer by looking forward to spending some time in a nice, air-conditioned movie theater. Brennan is joined by Gavin and Caleb to chat about the new films of July 2026, of which there are honestly not that many. But perhaps the lack of quantity will be matched with an uptick in quality. To kick things off with the movie roundtable, Gavin tackles the bizarre and potentially misguided French animated gay satire Jim Queen and the Quest for Chloroqueer, Brennan has a chance to catch the subject of a previous preview episode, the Australian gay-themed horror film Leviticus, leading to a deep dive into the good and bad of metaphor-driven cinematic storytelling, and Caleb does not watch a gay movie, but it is pretty politically charged: the recent Palestine 36, shot in the very shadow of the ongoing war in Gaza.