In this episode of the Critically Important podcast, Jason, Mallory and Espo decide to share their own personal hot takes, discuss movies that they love despite their (sometimes painfully obvious) flaws, and try to convince Jason that it's OK to give movies five stars.
Co-Host Hot Takes: After last week's episode where listeners bared their souls with their hot takes, Jason, Mallory and Espo share some of their own personal hot takes, including a love for the '80s cult classic Earth Girls Are Easy, an opinion that Tropic Thunder couldn't be made in 2019, and a firm belief that Speed Racer is the best movie of all-time (we'll let you guess who loved it enough to make this website: http://bit.ly/sr-best).
Problematic Movies: Yes, Jason, Mallory and Espo have movies that they know have obvious problems, but they absolutely love them anyway. So you'll hear the co-hosts discuss the filmographies (and personalities) of Woody Allen and Mel Gibson, the now apparent creepiness of Sixteen Candles, and have one defend the merits of Forrest Gump depsite its growing backlash.
Wars Involving Stars^: Jason and Espo have a philosophical difference when it comes to rating movie. Espo does not use half star ratings because he feels it's being too nit-picky, whie Jason does because he feels the half-star system makes for a perfect 1-10 rating scale. However, this means Jason has been historically stingy when it comes to giving movies the perfect 5 star score. So Espo and Mallory try to convince him to give some of his four and a half star movies that extra half star, from Whiplash and Toy Story 4 to Heat, Dunkirk and Schindler's List. And as always, if you want to see their latest reviews and ratings (and which movie Jason actually gave that bump to), check out their Letterboxd pages:
Jason: https://letterboxd.com/shoffatthemovie/
Mallory: https://letterboxd.com/malsie/
Espo: https://letterboxd.com/aesposito426/
^not titled "Star Wars" because we don't want to get sued by the Disney overlords