Critically Acclaimed Commentary Track: 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'

It's a FREE PREVIEW of our Patreon Exclusive commentary tracks! 

Now you can listen in while William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold watch and rant about some of the most beloved movies ever made, starting with Steven Spielberg's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK!

It's one of the best action movies, and in this free preview, Bibbs and Witney discuss the history of the film, its many cinematic influences, why some of the most famous plot holes aren't plot holes at all, and more! 

Just synch up your copy of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK to listen along in real time, or - if you know the movie pretty well already (and you probably do) - just listen to the episode like you would any other podcast.

Give it a listen!

Next time on CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED COMMENTARIES, Bibbs and Witney dive into the late 1990s slasher hit I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER! But that one (and every commentary track in the future) will be a Patreon Exclusive, so head on over and sign up!

Witney Seibold Reviews the First Season of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Brian Niland. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.] 

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” a TV show created by Joss Whedon, based on his screenplay for a 1992 horror/comedy film, ran from 1997 until 2003 on various networks, accumulating a cult audience that from a brief glimpse appears to be even more passionate about their object of affection than your average cult audience.

Only the Best: The Best Picture Nominees of 1934 (Part 2)!

ONLY THE BEST returns with the second half of the Best Picture Oscar-nominees of 1934! There were twelve nominees, and in this episode we dive into "Imitation of Life," "One Night of Love," "The Thin Man," "Viva Villa!," "The White Parade" and the winner, one of the most influential comedies ever made, Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night."

It's a strange ensemble of radically different movies, including progressive social dramas, creepy Opera romances, drunken murder mysteries, Mexican war epics, serious nursing school dramas and wacky road trips! 

And it's a veritable "who's who" of classic Hollywood, with performances by the great Claudette Colbert, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Wallace Beery, Loretta Young, Clark Gable and, well, Claudette Colbert (again)!

Only The Best is a Patreon-exclusive podcast, and you can listen right now for a $10 monthly pledge! You'll also get more bonus podcasts, the chance to vote for future episodes and the power to assign articles to Witney Seibold and William Bibbiani!

Head on over to sign up, and to give Only The Best a listen!

Photo: RKO

HUGE PATREON UPDATE!!!

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Only The Best: The Best Picture Nominees of 1934 (Part 1)!

ONLY THE BEST is back with a deep dive into the Best Picture nominees of 1934! There were twelve nominees at the 7th Academy Awards, and film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold take you back in time to review the first six: "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," "Cleopatra," "Flirtation Walk," "The Gay Divorcee," "Here Comes the Navy" and "The House of Rothschild!"

It's a cavalcade of iconic Golden Age Hollywood stars, including Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Norma Shearer, Charles Laughton, Claudette Colbert, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, George Arless, Loretta Young, James Cagney and Gloria Stuart!

Only The Best is a Patreon-exclusive podcast, and you can listen right now for a $10 monthly pledge! You'll also get more bonus podcasts, the chance to vote for future episodes and the power to assign articles to Witney Seibold and William Bibbiani!

Head on over to sign up, and to give Only The Best a listen!

Photo: RKO

William Bibbiani Reviews 'Devon's Ghost: Legend of the Bloody Boy'

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Kevin Klawitter. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.] 

You know that feeling when you’re watching a pretty bad slasher movie and halfway through it turns into a pretty good “Power Rangers” episode?

Of course you don’t… because you’ve never seen “Devon’s Ghost.”

Witney Seibold Reviews 'Once Upon a Time in the West'

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Eric Darling. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

Sergio Leone's 1968 classic “Once Upon a Time in the West” is the purest of his westerns.

With his acclaimed "Man With No Name" films, Leone established what had become the archetypal style and mood for any and all deconstructionist westerns that were to follow for the next few decades (at least up until “Unforgiven” in 1992). As such, the story, the characters, and even certain shots and photography choices feel uncannily familiar even to the uninitiated. It is, wielding American studio dollars, an impeccable, high-profile version of the slightly more ragged films that preceded it.

UPN's Lying Promos to 'Star Trek: Voyager'

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Canadian Keith. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

Trekkies in the 1990s remember UPN quite well. Paramount's wildly unsuccessful network, which lasted for 11 years and lost the studio nearly $800 million, only ever produced a small handful of hits. Over the years, show after show opened and closed on the network, some of them called the worst of all time (UPN was responsible for 1998's “The Secret Diaries of Desmond Pfeifer,” a tasteless sitcom set in the Lincoln White House). By the time of the great Viacom split in 2005, the UPN was a walking corpse, forced to merge with the equally beleaguered WB Network. The resulting network, The CW, was only slightly stronger than the two of them combined.

William Bibbiani Reviews 'Ninja III: The Domination'

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Anthony Peronto. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

The 1980s was a decade of many campy, ill-conceived, embarrassing or just plain terrible films. I spent most of my childhood consuming sugar-crazed mania flicks like “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie” and “Howard the Duck.” I love a heck of a lot of those films, but “Ninja III: The Domination” (1984) isn’t one of them. And at first, it was hard to put my finger on why.

On paper, I should love this movie. It’s a film about a golf club murder spree that leads, randomly, to an electrician (and part-time aerobics instructor) getting possessed by a ninja, which sometimes shoots out of her arcade cabinet. She goes on a mission of revenge against the cops who killed said ninja, before coming face to face with another ninja, because - and I’m dead serious about this - in the world of “Ninja III: The Domination,” only a ninja can kill a ninja.

Witney Seibold and William Bibbiani Review 'Justice League: The New Frontier'

[The following article was sponsored by our Patreon subscriber Sean Wrinkle, who assigned the same review to both of our critics. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

Witney Seibold's Review: 

In 2004, DC comics published a well-regarded and award-winning comic called DC: The New Frontier. Like Marvel Comics' Marvels from 1994, New Frontier was a retro-re-imagining of the company's central superhero characters, looking at their origin stories in an edgy, modern light. 

Although published a decade apart, both books follow the same ethos: To reinterpret the previously corny, fantastical, and boldly morally absolute world of Silver Age superhero comics and set them in a wholly modern and morally ambiguous world. Both books highlight not the glories, but the tragedy, violence, and inner turbulence of their superhero characters; They eschew the bold-faced kid-friendly avatars of our childhoods, replacing them with more mature, complex figures of philosophical ambivalence.

Absurdism in Film: An Overview

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber R. Clay Johnson. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

What do a bicycle and a duck have in common?

They both have handlebars, except for the duck.

For the rebellious, for the contrarian, for the playful adolescent punk, absurdism is an appealing philosophy. For those eager to playfully circumvent the status quo – to subvert the dominant paradigm, as the saying goes – absurdism can be wielded as an ideology as well as a category of humor, both intended to confront the listener with a simple philosophical truth: That nothing has any meaning and everything can be deconstructed and reduced down to the point where its base elements appear to have no connection at all.

The Canceled Too Soon Monthly Movie: 'Home for the Holidays' (1972)

Was the TV movie "Home for the Holidays" the first real slasher film? It predates "Black Christmas," so it may be true! And if so, it's an important film to rediscover for horror fans (and Christmas fans) everywhere.

This month on The Canceled Too Soon Monthly Movie, film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold dig up this forgotten horror film, starring Sally Field, Jessica Walter, Julie Harris, Eleanor Parker and Walter Brennan, and see just how scary - and just how Christmasy - it really is!

Witney Seibold Looks Back at 'Bowfinger,' 19 Years Later

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Geoff Alterman. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

Frank Oz's “Bowfinger,” written by Steve Martin, was released in theaters in August of 1999 to a generally positive response, although it was by no means a giant hit. In the 19 years since its release, it has quietly gathered a small cult of affable devotees who hold it up as a great example of broad showbiz satire. 

I sharply recall seeing “Bowfinger” in 1999, and I even wrote an (unpublished) review at the time, which fell in line with popular opinion: I found the film to be approachable, pleasant, slight and more amusing than outright funny. The film's core idea was its best feature: Having no money to make a feature film, an ambitious B-movie director shoots a sci-fi thriller, guerrilla style and in public, around a famous Hollywood star who has no idea he's being included.

19 years later, “Bowfinger” hasn't aged well, nor has it aged poorly. It's just as mildly-funny as it was in 1999, it's just as slight, it's just as pleasant. Now, as then, “Bowfinger” seems afraid to get its claws out. 

Witney Seibold Reviews 'Pelíšky' a.k.a. 'Cosy Dens'

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Benjamin Pastor. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

Jan Hřebejk's film “Pelíšky” (translated into English as “Cosy Dens”), is as twee as they come. Set in Prague in late 1967 – mere months before the Communist invasion of the city – “Pelíšky” takes place largely in the stiflingly ultra-clean, chintzy, Plasticine apartments of presumably average Czech citizens as they suffer through Christmas together.

William Bibbiani Reviews 'Elvira's MTV Halloween Special' (1986)

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Salem Horror Fest. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

It’s staggeringly passé to suggest that, in the wake of media like “Stranger Things” and “It” and “[Insert Nostalgia Property Here],” nostalgia for the 1980s is at an all-time high. Of course it. People love the 1980s. Or rather, they love the stuff they remember about it, a.k.a. the stuff that still glitters. 

The 1980s were a time when media consumption was escalating, thanks to the increasing availability of home video and cable television. Filmmakers, producers and artists were struggling to create enough content to occupy that vast new landscape, and for every all-time classic we still remember today there’s a well-intentioned, amiable but slapdash outing like “Elvira’s MTV Halloween Special.”

Witney Seibold Reviews 'The Visitor' (1979)

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Anthony Peronto. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

I first encountered Michael J. Paradise's “The Visitor” at an after-hours, by-invite-only screening curated by my local video store. 

You see: The managers of said video store would, on a weekly basis, acquire whatever 35mm prints they could get a hold of for cheap and/or free. These prints consisted of obscure German comedies, weird sex films, lost genre oddities, sci-fi epics with missing reels, and, in one baffling bout of programming, “My Giant.” Then, in conjunction with a helpful projectionist at the movie theater next door (where I worked at the time), the store managers would invite over employees and friends of employees to view said films, eager to talk aloud in the theater and openly discuss the insanity on screen. These were magical nights of baffling cinematic exploration, and I'm glad to have been invited on several occasions.

It was in this milieu that I was introduced to Michael J. Paradise's 1979 sci-fi epic “The Visitor,” perhaps one of the most baffling films ever produced. It was such a moving experience that I rushed to my (now long-neglected) criticism blog to review it. That was in 2007. The time has now come to re-visit “The Visitor” and see what new lessons can be learned. Luckily, the film is just as brain-melting as it always was.

Five Films William Bibbiani Likes That Other Critics Hated

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Richard Franzwa. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

“And it is here,” as Witney Seibold recently wrote, “That I lose you.”

One of the (many) problems with the modern age of film criticism is that websites like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic have created the illusion of a consensus. The idea that is that if a large percentage of critics like a movie, it must be great, and if a large percentage of critics dislike it, it must be bad. And that’s just not how subjective opinions work.

The point of criticism isn’t to create an objective reality out of subjective opinion. The point is to share our subjective opinions as eloquently and informatively and entertainingly as possible. If everyone had the same opinion, we wouldn’t need everyone to chime in. We need outliers to challenge our collective understanding of the art form, and to stir up new conversations about film. 

Witney Seibold Reviews 'Yeti: A Love Story'

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Bob the Love Goat. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

Back in the mid-to-late-1990s, during the crest of VHS culture, a casual B-movie enthusiast of straight-to-video schlock would be intimately familiar with the output of Troma. The New Jersey-based independent movie house gained a lot of cultural traction in those days with some of the most lurid, definitely some of the cheapest, and possibly the strangest films one could find. They were commonly emblazoned with weirdly musical titles like “Teenage Catgirls in Heat,” “Rabid Grannies,” “The Toxic Avenger,” “Killer Condom,” “Cannibal! The Musical,” and “Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD.” The crown jewel of 1990s Troma was, to this critic's eye, “Tromeo and Juliet,” a bizarre dystopian take on Shakespeare's tragic romance, only with killer penis monsters, lesbian sex scenes, porn consumption, and Lemmy from Motörhead.

Since the 1990s, Troma has been canonized as an important cult house by fans of gore films, and the studio's co-founder, Lloyd Kaufman, is a regular installation at pop culture conventions; there's nothing he won't do to promote his movies. But even though they are well-regarded in 2018, Troma's output has ebbed in quality (if that was possible), skewing increasingly into the realm of hasty, murky digital photography and sloppier-than-ever filmmaking. 

Where Witney Loses You: Five Films I Like Far Less Than Most Critics

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Richard Franzwa. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

And it is here that I lose you.

No critic agrees with popular opinion 100% of the time. Even with universally beloved films, there are always at least a small handful of dissenters who are earnestly unmoved. When in conversation with their professional peers, some critics will even tactfully obfuscate their dislike of an adored classic in the fear of staring an argument they don't wish to have at that moment. Although if the subject comes up, it will be the critic's duty to explain why they fall on “the wrong side,” as it were, and they will be in the position of getting to talk out why, say, “The Shawshank Redemption” is overrated, or why “The Godfather” might have a fundamental flaw that few recognize (these are mere examples; I personally like the former and love the latter of those films). 

This is the curse of the critic: They must always be honest, even if – especially if – their opinion us unpopular.

Seven Films That Suffered from the Worst Possible Timing

[The following article was sponsored and assigned by our Patreon subscriber Kevin Klawitter. To learn how to sponsor and assign articles to William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold for publication at Critically Acclaimed, visit our Patreon page.]

I shouldn't need to iterate this, given the current shape of online discourse surrounding “bad” movies, but Vondie Curtis Hall's musical “Glitter,” the 2001 feature film vehicle for pop sensation Mariah Carey, is, to this day, often considered one of the worst films of its decade. As of this writing, it boasts a 7% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards, winning the award for Worst Actress. What's more, “Glitter” was a financial flop, having made only three-quarters of a million dollars on its opening weekend, finishing at 11th place.