To the '90s and Beyond! Film Podcast

Dragged Across Concrete is writer-director S. Craig Zahler’s further exploration of the seamy underbelly of American society, particularly through the prism of how that experience causes ripple effects that throw even innocent people into the wake of the criminals. Most of the action follows the exploits of two cops in the fictional city of Bulwark, the older burnout Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and his younger partner Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn), who get suspended from the force after they are caught on camera going a little too far in roughing up a suspect in the current environment that frowns on the perception of racial profiling. The other major story arc in the film involves Henry Johns, just released from prison, going back to a life of crime in order to provide for his mother (a drug user who has been prostituting herself for needed cash) and disabled younger brother, who has aspirations of becoming a video game developer. The two stories converge when the cops decide they’re going to snatch money from a secretive drug dealer named Vogelmann, while Henry, working for that guy, becomes the wheel-man in a bank heist.

Key stars as Clarence, a straight-laced suburbanite who is lured by his recently broken-up slacker cousin Rell, played by Peele, to finally cut loose with his wife away for the weekend. Little do they know that this 'cutting a little loose' might involve strippers, drugs and murder, as Rell's adorable kitty, which has given him his long-lost mojo back, has been taken in a mistaken-identity burglary by Cheddar, the leader of the gang called the Blips (those who left the Bloods or Crips), who will only give Keanu back if the men, who are posing Tectonic and Shark Tank, out-of-towner hitmen called the Allentown gang (mute, trench-coated thugs also played by Key and Peele), who are also on the lookout for the lovable kitten that got away from them during a gunfight at the film's intro.

The plot involves the Dynamic Duo trying to take down their main four nemeses -- Joker, Riddler, Penguin and Catwoman -- who've joined forces to capture a Replicator Ray. which is a laser-gun of sorts that can make an exact replica of anything it targets. Despite falling into the right hands, those with wrong hands still manage to manipulate matters to their benefit, resulting in a major upheaval in the city of Gotham that could have long-ranging consequences if the good guys can't figure out how to reverse the Ray's duplicative properties.

The Hunt is a violent satire in which liberals kidnap and hunt down "deplorables", aka Trump supporters. These deplorables wake up in an undisclosed rural area gagged online bloggers and internet trolls claimed to expose online as "Manorgate," but are left with keys, tools, and weapons to potentially defend themselves and get free. The private jet-flying, caviar-consuming liberal elites hunting them down like giving them a sporting chance, though the odds are heavily stacked against them. However, one of the captives is able to give the hunters a run for their money. Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Wayne Duvall, Ike Barinholtz, Emma Roberts, Ethan Suplee appear in this film written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, directed by Craig Zobel.

This time out, the character of Bumblebee ends up going back to his original look from the toy line and cartoon series of a Volkswagen Beetle, when he arrives on Earth back in 1987 as part of a last-minute escape plan for the Autobots on Cybertron to find an inhabitable planet as theirs is about to be destroyed in an all-out civil war with the Decepticons. Bumblebee ends up emerging in California, where his dormant state of the Beetle laying in rust in a junkyard, in hiding after being hunted by Sector Seven (the government agency who first discovers him), draws the eye of a troubled teenage girl named Charlie Watson, who views the car as freedom and an opportunity to follow in her recently deceased father’s footsteps by repairing two damaged precious things – the car, and herself.