Erik Childress and Steve Prokopy open May 2021 with eight (mostly) new movie reviews. There’s a racially-charged Sundance drama that premiered in 2018 (Monster), the true story of an FBI informant played by Emilia Clarke who got too close to her handler that was made in 2019 (Above Suspicion) the same year when 15 Things You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot premiered at the Austin Film Festival. They also look at a documentary about Sean Penn’s philanthropic efforts (Citizen Penn), Mena Suvari forced to find stolen diamonds at a storage facility (Locked In) and David Oyelowo’s directorial debut (The Water Man) that shares a lot with a 2016 film. Billy Crystal is also back in the director’s chair for the first time in 20 years (Here Today) and its been over 20 years since we first heard from director Guy Ritchie. Can his latest, Wrath of Man, cool the wrath Erik has carried for his resume?

Considering their lack of enthusiasm for the recent Godzilla vs. Kong, Sergio Mims and Erik Childress decided to list some of their favorite monster movies. This extended segment from their Bad Mutha Film Show on WHPK Radio in Chicago offers 20 alternatives to the weak titan sauce in theaters. They include from the world of Ray Harryhausen, inspirations for the current versus, not to mention remakes (and sequels) that outdo the originals. It’s a two-plus hour celebration of giants and tiny things you only want to mess with at the movies.

Erik Childress and Steve Prokopy look at another ten movies this week to close out April. Steve checks in on a documentary about Alan Ladd Jr. (Laddie: The Man Behind the Movies), Brian Tyree Henry is an introvert locked out of his apartment (The Outside Story) and the tale of an Syrian immigrant waiting for asylum in Scotland (Limbo) while Erik talks about a female arm-wrestling comedy (Golden Arm). The pair also discuss Anson Mount as an egocentric assassin (The Virtuoso), jerky teenagers in Dublin (Here Are The Young Men) and junkie Mila Kunis seeking help from mom Glenn Close (Four Good Days). There are also ghosts in the Hudson Valley with Amanda Seyfried (Things Heard & Seen) and more ghosts in a Brooklyn custody battle (Separation). Then finally they close out the month with the latest film in the Tom Clancy universe with Michael B. Jordan (Without Remorse).

Sergio Mims returns with another look at the latest and greatest in Blu-rays. Along with Erik Childress they catch up on Arrow’s release of Kevin Smith’s Mallrats and Sergio’s lingering love for sword-and-sandal films with Film Detective’s Hercules and the Captive Women. They look at a pair of overseas releases of Paramount thrillers Black Sunday and Breakdown and express their great love for the studio’s long-overdue release of Michael Ritchie’s The Bad News Bears. They still have enough time to talk up a number of Warner Archive titles including musicals Annie Get Your Gun and Broadway Melody of 1940, a trio of Tarzan titles and are then overjoyed to get one of their recent not-on-Blu-Ray titles released, the Bill Murray bank robbery comedy, Quick Change.

There are a couple of great battles in the films reviewed on this episode, but Erik Childress and Steve Prokopy leave no film behind this week before debating their merits. Ten films on the docket including films about pigs with no dialogue (Gunda), werewolves with some songwriting (Bloodthirsty) and Lovecraftian fish people who want to spawn with a couple (The Deep Ones). Ed Helms wants Patti Harrison to carry his baby (Together Together) and William Jackson Harper wants to know why Aya Cash won’t marry him (We Broke Up). A pair of documentaries explore the origins of a unique celebrity (Tiny Tim: King for a Day) and a beloved children’s program (Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street) while Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette and Daniel Dae Kim head to Mars with an uninvited guest (Stowaway). But if battles are what you are looking for get ready for The Mitchells vs. the Machines and the long-awaited “R”-rated adaptation of the video game, Mortal Kombat

From their WHPK radio show out of the University of Chicago, The Bad Mutha Film Show, Sergio Mims and Erik Childress do another round on the current state of theaters. Where are we headed after Godzilla vs. Kong and is it really the blockbuster titles that we should be looking at to pave the way? Did Paramount make a colossal blunder in moving the Top Gun sequel off the summer schedule and what studio could take advantage of that? They also discuss the closing of the Navy Pier IMAX theater in Chicago and Sergio continues to wonder if Warner Bros. is willing to pull an audible on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune while Erik is skeptical about that and its prospects in general.

We’re only halfway through April 2021 and the good movies are few and far between. But Erik Childress and Steve Prokopy may actually have a few recommendations for you this week and it arrives with horror in all its manifestations. There is a haunted house (The Banishing), backwoods farmers (Honeydew) and the woods themselves (In the Earth). But there are also toxic relationships (Monday, Slalom), shadow organizations (Trigger Point, The Rookies) and Ruby Rose running down jobs for a wheelchair-bound Morgan Freeman (Vanquish). But there is nothing horrible about the wonderful Barbara Crampton getting a chance to sink her teeth into a lead role in Travis Stevens’ Jakob’s Wife and the duo expand upon their praise from SXSW.

After the recent film, Malcolm & Marie, went off on a diatribe against film critics, Erik Childress and Sergio Mims decided to look at the way films (and even television) have treated critics of all times. Sometimes satirically, but often as a reaction or a way for filmmakers to enact revenge on those who have taken shots at their work. Are film critics influenced negatively – or even positively – when they are acknowledged in unflattering (or even unfair) terms but those holding a grudge? Can we laugh at ourselves when the opportunity arises or be held to account when justified?

Erik Childress and Steve Prokopy look at six movies on this week’s show. They review a story of the brutal military service of South Africa (Moffie), what a refugee will do to flee civil war (The Man Who Sold His Skin), a visual landscape brought to you by one of Terrence Malick’s cinematographers (Awaken) and how one survives the night shift at a haunted hospital (The Power). Most of their discussion this week is reserved for how Ben Falcone is failing Melissa McCarthy in their fifth collaboration (Thunder Force) and what happens when a filmmaker tries to mask the classic story he’s really telling by ignoring the more interesting one he’s created (Voyagers.)

Erik Childress and Steve Prokopy are back with this week’s movie reviews. Six films in a somewhat lackluster week, albeit a few recommendations. But which film(s) will it be? Can it be another corporate rise-and-fall documentary (WeWork: The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn)? Is Michelle Pfeiffer as a rich socialite the draw (French Exit) or is it Idris Elba as an urban cowboy (Concrete Cowboy)? Maybe its Jeffrey Dean Morgan fighting against Christian horror (Roe v Wade – sorry, The Unholy) or a young Jewish woman in a den of disappointment directed at her (Shiva Baby)? No, surely it’s the long-in-the-works film about the landmark abortion case in the hands of conservative fact-fudgers (The Unholy – sorry, Roe v Wade)? Also, if you are looking for the show on favorite screen villains, that is one episode earlier.