Watchcast Schedule for February 2023

Greetings, Nextlanders! January is in the books, which means it's time to let everyone know what we've got planned for the Watchcast in the month of February. As we have completed our trek through Star Trek's first season, we're gonna be taking a pause on TV show watching for a little while and focus on some movie months. This month's theme comes from Brad's strong desire for some more Wesley Snipes after watching Blade last month, and Demolition Man was at the top of his list. For the theme, I thought I'd collect some other extremely goofy '90s action/sci-fi flicks that feel like they're of a kind with Demolition Man. Here's what we've got lined up:

February 6th: Virtuosity (1995)

Oh my stars and garters. For our first action/sci-fi "epic", I've chosen 1995's ex-cop vs. virtual murder thriller Virtuosity. Denzel Washington is an incarcerated ex-cop tasked with tracking down Sid 6.7, played by a still-only-famous-in-Australia Russell Crowe. Sid is a collection of 183 serial killers fed into a futuristic AI program. Eventually he busts loose of his virtual confines and wreaks havoc on future-ish Los Angeles. Again, this movie is trash, but Crowe is a bonafide hoot as Sid, and Denzel gives this incoherent mess of a movie way more effort than it deserves. I mostly chose this because I hadn't seen it since the '90s, and wanted to remember if it was as dumb as I recalled. I can safely say it's several orders of magnitude dumber. Can't wait to talk about it with the guys.

February 13th: Demolition Man (1994)

Speaking of goofy camp trash, Demolition Man is goofy camp trash of the highest order. Sylvester Stallone is super cop John Spartan, who is sent to a cryo-prison for a crime he didn't commit, and unfrozen decades later in a Los Angeles that can be best described as a Fox News viewer's nightmare. Violence is all but eliminated, peace and harmony are the norm, and only he can stop the insane killer Simon Phoenix, who has been unleashed upon these poor sheeple. Stallone has as much fun as he has anywhere in the '90s playing a parody of the action persona he repeated through much of the '80s, Snipes is properly unleashed as Phoenix, and Sandra Bullock is having a grand old time as a future cop desperate for some action. We also might have ourselves a guest for this one. Stay tuned for more on that.

February 20th: Freejack (1992)

One of my directives for the Watchcast is to make sure we eventually watch every movie that we had poster or banner art of posted somewhere in one of our old Giant Bomb/Whiskey offices. Back when we were running Screened, somehow we came into possession of a giant vinyl banner for Freejack. Now we can officially tick this one off the list. This movie is dumb as hell, and it's one I have a weird amount of affection for. Emilio Estevez is a race car driver who seemingly dies in an accident on the track, but instead wakes up in a nightmare future where people from the past are warped in so their bodies can be used by dying rich people. Anthony Hopkins is somehow in this and looks like he desperately wishes he wasn't. Mick Jagger is also in this and driving around what could charitably be described as a homemade GI Joe battle tank through most of it. Rene Russo is also somehow in this and--you know what? That's enough. I'm just excited to make you all watch one of my favorite dumb movies.

February 27th: Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

You wanted more Keanu. Heck, we wanted more Keanu, too! Here is more Keanu.

This mid-'90s cyberpunk thriller (written by William Gibson! the cyberpunk man himself!) has a million things going for it and somehow doesn't quite hit the mark with any of them. It's a great concept: Reeves is a courier who stores his goods in his own brain, and has to outrun a whole bunch of people who want the thing currently stored in his dome. The cast, which includes Dolph Lundgren, Ice-T, Henry Rollins, Beat Takeshi, and Udo Kier, is fantastic. Somehow, none of it quite pulls together, but taken purely as a cyberpunk spectacle, it's a lot of weird-ass fun. There is a Japanese director's cut of this floating around on some limited edition blu-ray release, but I think we're gonna stick with the theatrical cut on this one since it's the most widely available version. 

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And that's what we've got coming up in February! I think this'll be a fun month, and hope you all enjoy the flicks we've got lined up. As always, thanks for listening and watching along with us. We'll see you at the movies!