Nerd Lunch

Michael, Rob, Kay, and Robert Zerbe look back at their favorite movies, shows, and books of 2023, check in on their pop culture predictions and resolutions from the year, and make new ones for 2024.

Michael, Rob, and Pax finish their exploration of the classic Planet of the Apes series with the fifth and final entry, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. There are budget issues and a confusing timeline to talk about, but also some great characters and cool dilemmas. 

Michael, Rob, and Karen Flieger kick off the new year with one of the most infamous Bond movies. James Bond goes to space and pigeons do double-takes in the over-the-top, Star Wars-inspired Moonraker. Is it fun? Is it garbage? Or is it both?

Happy New Year! We took a little break from our Apesathon during the holidays, but we're back with the penultimate entry in the original series: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. It's a bold, challenging movie with some things to say about power and the civil rights movement. It also has a couple of endings and some continuity issues. Which all means that there's plenty to talk about.

Michael and Jess talk about the first three movies in Universal's Invisible "Man" series: The Invisible Man (1933), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), and The Invisible Woman (1940). Including that last one turned out to be a controversial decision, so we talked about that, too.

Merry Christmas! On this 25th day of December, we're sharing our 250th episode of After Lunch and it's a jolly one. Michael and Rob are joined by Pop Culture Retrofitters Michael DiGiovanni and Christian Nielsen to nominate and vote on their favorite movie and TV Santas. We've made our lists and checked them twice; it's time to decide who is the best representation of Santa Claus. 

Wrapping up this season's series of Sleigh Bell Cinema reruns, Michael and Rob talk about one of their favorite Christmas movies, Love Actually. The movie's celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, so we're ending these reruns by showing it some love (while also talking about its faults).

We’re down to our last two Sleigh Bell Cinema re-runs for this season and these are biggies. Today it’s one of Michael's family’s absolute favorites: a movie that they cannot safely get through the holiday season without watching. We’re talking about Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen in White Christmas. And since it’s such a tradition with Michael's family, it’s appropriate that he talked about it with his wife Diane.

It's a clinker! This last week before Christmas we have three final Christmas Spirit movies to discuss and they’re all biggies. This first one is the cable classic A Christmas Story from 1983 and talking with Michael about it is the one and only Paxton Holley.

This episode will be the last of our daily releases for the month. From here to Christmas we’ll be going every other day. But we think we’ve saved the best for last. Not the best conversations necessarily. Those have all been great and so will these. But like Home Alone yesterday, these next few movies are some of Michael's favorite holiday films. True classics like While You Were Sleeping, which Michael talked about with his friend Erik Johnson.

Yesterday we shared an episode where Evan Hanson and Michael talked about the movie Krampus, where a kid gets irritated with his family and then has to defend his home from malignant forces. That’s also what happens in today’s movie as Michael and his son David discuss the classic, Home Alone.

Yesterday we shared an episode where Chad Young and I talked about the Christmas slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night in which a young man has a twisted image of Santa as a being who ruthlessly punishes the naughty. Because of that, I mentioned in the episode that it would make a good double-feature with the 2015 movie Krampus, which is also about a vengeful holiday spirit who punishes the naughty. So that’s the movie that Evan Hanson and I talk about in this episode.  It stars Adam Scott and Toni Collette, is occasionally funny, occasionally scary, and as Evan points out, actually pretty important.

Yesterday we got a little dark with Bad Santa, but today we’re getting really dark with our favorite Christmas slasher movie, Silent Night, Deadly Night. Talking with Michael about it is Chad Young (aka HorrorMovieBBQ), who knew a lot more about it and its sequels than Michael did. They had a really fun conversation, so don’t be naughty. Give it a listen.

We’re moving out of silly comedy territory with this episode, but till in the comedy genre for now. This one’s a little bit darker though. From 2003, it’s Bad Santa, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Lauren Graham, Bernie Mac, and John Ritter. Talking with Michael about it is his pal and occasional podcasting partner, Dan Taylor. This one might get a little naughty.

Yesterday, Michael DiGiovanni and Michael May talked about Christmas Vacation and how - during their prep for that conversation - they discovered the existence of a weird sequel called Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure. Of course they had to come back and talk about it. And they invited Paxton Holley to do that with them.

We’re re-running a stretch of silly comedies from the Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast, so of course we can’t get too far into that without talking about National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. That’s exactly what Michael May and Michael DiGiovanni did and Michael May's opinion of the movie changed as a result.

Yesterday we shared a discussion of the 1994 movie Mixed Nuts, so we’ll stick with the silly comedies for a bit. In this episode, Michael and his son David talk about Seth Gordon’s Four Christmases starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn and an awesome cast of co-stars like Mary Steenburgen, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Jon Favreau, and Kristin Chenoweth.

The last couple of days, we reshared discussions that Noel Thingvall and Michael had about the classic Christmas in Connecticut and its remake. Today we’re making a trilogy of it and sharing Noel’s other appearance on the show where he introduced Michael to a Christmas comedy he'd never even heard of before. It’s Mixed Nuts starring a huge cast that includes Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Liev Schreiber, Rob Reiner, Parker Posey, Robert Klein, Juliette Lewis, Adam Sandler, Rita Wilson, Jon Stewart, and Garry Shandling.

Yesterday we re-ran a conversation between Noel Thingvall and Michael about the 1945 classic, Christmas in Connecticut. We mentioned a couple of times in that conversation that there’s a remake of that movie, so of course Michael and Noel also had to talk about that one. The remake was a TV movie from 1992 starring Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson, and Tony Curtis. And most remarkably, directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yesterday we re-ran a conversation that Rob and Michael had about the 1949 movie Holiday Affair on Michael's old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast. Today, it’s another movie from the ‘40s and even more of a classic. From 1945, it’s Christmas in Connecticut starring Barbara Stanwyck. Our guest for the episode was Noel Thingvall, who’s also been on After Lunch a few times in the last couple of years.