Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather (temporarily regaining the throne as the host of the program!) undertake the annual tradition of interpreting the commercials and halftime show of the Super Bowl. This year, they find a strange landscape of dislocation and confusion: no one is whe…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Some of the most fascinating movies are the big hits that somehow faded from our collective memories. Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather revisit Disney’s fascinating Dick Tracy, a 1990 kids movie that was heavily promoted at McDonalds and features dozens of people…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, and Pete Fenzel, and Matthew Wrather rummage through the sci-fi spare parts that comprise Section 31, the Emperor Philippa Georgiou spin-off movie that you never knew you wanted, because you never wanted it. Assembled under the aegis of Star Trek, this up-tempo outing hacks t…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie (Good Matt), Matt Wrather (Evil Matt), Mark Lee (Good and Evil Mark at the Same Time), and Pete Fenzel (Fenzel, Walk With Me) honor the passing of the cinematic visionary David Lynch by watching and talking about Blue Velvet, his 1986 neo noir art cinema comeback in the wake o…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Fenzel and Belinkie are lapsed wrestling fans, at least partially because we no longer have cable. But with Monday Night RAW moving to Netflix, this gives us the perfect opportunity to revisit one of America’s most unique artforms. The WWE (née F) has been a pop culture force to be reckoned…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Clint Eastwood has been one of America’s most iconic actors and directors for several generations now, and he’s kept busy well into his 90s. But with no projects currently in development, it seems like Juror #2 might be his swan song. Like many of his directorial efforts, this movie is abou…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! For years, Jimmy Carter was seen as a symbol of humiliating failure. (Back in 1993, The Simpsons did a joke where the town couldn’t afford a Lincoln statue and had to settle for a Carter one.) But Carter spent his post-presidency tirelessly working for Habitat for Humanity and winning Nobel…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather celebrate the last podcast of the year with the themes that made 2024 what it was. Lee defies gravity, Wrather buys reading glasses, Belinkie revs up his chainsaw sword, and Fenzel steps back for a logo 3. It’s not a year in review,…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Mark Lee, Matt Wrather, Peter Fenzel, and Matt Belinkie, Hannukah preparations notwithstanding, triangulate and ascertain the True Reason for the Season with the freshest of holiday treats: 2024 Christmas movies. It’s a ginger-spiced promenade from the Rock to the Lohan and Hallmark to Hell…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Hot on the heels of our discussion about Sequel Culture, Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee and Pete Fenzel re-enter the arena to discuss Gladiator 2. In the halcyon summer of 2000, it seemed to some people that liberal democracy had won a final enduring victory, and the original Gladiator’s framing o…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Pete Fenzel do something boldly original and never to be repeated: talk about pop culture trend pieces written by actual newspapers. In the immediate aftermath of seeing Moana 2 and Gladiator 2, it’s time to chat about the cluster of think pieces around Hollywoo…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Pete Fenzel and Matt Wrather hold a storied two-hander on Ted Danson’s new Netflix retirement home spy sitcom, A Man on the Inside, which rides the lines among funny and solemn; easy and challenging; and polemic and hagiography. We dig deep on the “All the World’s a Stage” monologue from Sh…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Wrather makes a surprise stop in from parental leave to join Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee and Pete Fenzel as we discuss The Onion: its history, style, and modes of satire through the years. We overthink the A.I.-threatened art of clever photoshopping, the dialogue between image and text, do…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! After six years as the only Overthinker to appreciate these masterpieces, Pete Fenzel has finally convinced Matt Belinke to watch the Tom Hardy Venom movies. And it’s just in time, as Venom: The Last Dance is here to escort the series to its Comic Book Death (and inevitable resurrection). W…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Mark Lee, Pete Fenzel, and Matt Belinkie check in with the mother of all cinematic franchises, Godzilla. After 70 years and 38 films, how can the big guy possibly surprise us, much less move us? Well shockingly, Godzilla Minus One from 2023 got a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, and earned an Oscar …

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Pete Fenzel make their vague dreams into iconic realities by overthinking The Greatest Showman. Is it a concept album with spectacular visuals and only a loose plot, or a symbolic visual poem packed with bangers? An idealistic romp about a great historical cynic…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Podfather Matt Wrather is notoriously adverse to scary movies. But as he is still on paternity leave, Pete, Mark, and Matt B overthink “Trap,” a movie that is about being a dad both explicitly and metatextually. Is it a good movie? No, it is not. Its premise is nonsensical, its structure is…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee step slowly up to the wrought-iron knocker on the old oak door of this haunted mansion we call a podcast and knock three times to welcome Halloween! The door creaks on rusty hinges to reveal a bowl of tricks and treats: the spooky-scary and the spoo…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Against all odds, Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee have reunited in tribute to the upcoming Oasis tour. Inspired by their once-intense but now fatigued, even deadened feelings for “Wonderwall,” they discuss the phenomenology of overplaying, the art of giving up on song meaning, and…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! In the 21st century, Dame Maggie Smith was celebrated for her portrayals of Hogwarts’s Professor McGonagall and Downton’s Dowager Countess Violet Crawley. But decades before that, she won two Oscars for movies that are now so obscure you can watch them for free on YouTube. What ties togethe…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! The Bachelor franchise has been chugging along for more than 20 years now, in a neverending ouroboros of broken hearts and moonlit dinners surrounded by hundreds of tea candles. Audiences want to see the fairy tale romance, and don’t seem to mind the awkward fact that the large majority of …

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Overthinking It has been obsessing over, and often lamenting, the Terminator franchise going all the way back to the regrettable 2009 entry, “Terminator Salvation.” The latest entry to the franchise, “Terminator Zero,” is a Netflix animated series and is much better than Salvation and subse…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Beetlejuice is such an iconic character that it’s easy to forget how weird and confusing he is (for starters, his name is actually spelled “Betelgeuse” according to his own tombstone). In this episode, Mark, Pete, Jordan, and Matt Belinkie (your substitute Matt) try to figure out if we’re d…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Once Matt Wrather heads off to parental leave, Overthinking It will be staffed entirely by parents. In the last podcast before this happens, this selfsame Impending Dad Matt, Peter Fenzel and Mark Lee each bring their own choice for “End of an Era” culture for discussion. Pete speaks on Ben…

Support Overthinking It by becoming a member for $5/month! Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather examine the Netflix series called The Decameron, which does bear some loose resemblance to Bocaccio’s similarly-titled work of medieval literature. Download (MP3) Subscribe: iTunes Other Apps Further Reading The Decameron (Wikipedia) A lectur…