We watched both Davis Ayer’s Suicide Squad and Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn to discuss everyone’s favorite Clown Princess of Crime! Does the male gaze matter or does everyone still treat her like she’s crazy? What did my girlfriend think of Jared Leto’s Joker, the representation of Black Canary, and…

’Twas the day before Valentine’s Day when the podcasting girlfriends discussed the Kung Fu Panda trilogy! We go over Orientalism, first cinema experiences, Puss in Boots versus Dead Poets Society, how Glee can help you learn English better than any teacher, fatphobia, pear-shaped pandas, Jar Jar Binks and Drunken Fist wushu, Rebel Wilson, Fate: The…

My girlfriend stayed mostly awake for three hours to watch Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of Watchmen! We discuss the deconstruction of superheroes as pathetic, the many shades of moral grays in all its characters, the threat of nuclear war and the current state of Trumpian politics, and somehow we still have fun. Also, can anybody tell me what Carte…

Come and witness the first structured episode of Stealing the Remote! My lovely girlfriend Mijntje has notes and we barely get off-topic while discussing the trippiest biographical musical out there, Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman! We dissect my lack of knowledge about Elton John, her crush on Richard Madden, and how much I hate that guy. In this epis…

My girlfriend had somehow never seen Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman despite living on this planet as a person of the female variety, so what better occasion to get her caught up than the release of its sequel, Wonder Woman 1984? She fawns over Chris Pine, compares the plot to Tom Shadyac’s Bruce Almighty and explains her complicated relationship with …

My girlfriend made me watch Nancy Meyers’ The Holiday and we decided to record an episode about this pure feel-good romcom on the night of the week with the highest number of cargo trains possible passing my dorm! She gushes about Jack Black and the one black character who has two seconds of screen time, while I gush about... Jude Law? Thankfully, …

It's my turn again! My lovely girlfriend Mijntje watched David F. Sandberg's Shazam! along with me so I could prove to her that DC Films had a fun, funny, festive Christmas movie in its catalogue. Depressing, my ass. We cover the Fawcett Comics history briefly and without research, profess our love for the Marvel Family as well as the casting direc…

Welcome back to the new and possibly improved but probably equally middle-of-the-road Stealing the Remote! For season two I have asked, manipulated, and/or bribed my lovely girlfriend Mijntje to join me on my quest to make people watch movies I like. Somehow, she then tricked me into watching a movie she liked: Tom McGrath's Megamind! What I can ni…

We return with the fifth installment in the Jurassic Park franchise, J.A. Bayona’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom! In our second take on this movie, we decide whether to let nature take its course or save the dinosaurs, I wonder if Hollywood isn’t just an island, and Mom remembers my toy dinos fondly. Bryce Dallas Howard’s running on heels is scrut…

After an unplanned hiatus, we return with a movie nobody has heard of: Lukas Dhont’s Girl! We discuss the casting controversy while I’m breathing heavily from running up and down a single flight of stairs before recording, Mom remembers the music video for Wrabel’s “The Village”, I start ranting about the writer-director in a monologue that will go…

Back for another comic book movie, I lure Mom in with promises of Colin Firth without spoiling/warning that he violently kills dozens of people! In our episode on Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service we talk for a bit about my mom’s legs, she confuses the first scene for the second scene and vice versa, and I rely completely on what she te…

We make our triumphant return to form with a superhero film that requires me to explain the history of the genre in order to make Mom understand this wasn’t actually that mediocre for the time it was released: Bryan Singer’s X-Men! Having been on vacation to Israel, where we visited Yad Vashem, we get into our happiest episode yet, as we extensivel…

We’re back with a movie that’s my own age! We explain where we’ve been for a month – the answers are disappointing, I assure you – and dive into Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. We earned the Explicit rating on this one. Mom brags about her memory and recalls her high school students watching this wholly appropriate film about heroin, while I mistake t…

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled episode where Effie is in charge! (Well, almost regularly scheduled.) Mom talks about our recording time for a bit, as well as those other Avengers you may have heard about, and her childhood Halloween dreams from before Halloween was a thing here. The word coiffure gets thrown around, so on behalf of Mom: p…

It’s Mom’s turn again in this episode! We know she promised a funnier film, but what you got is David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago. After joking around about Mom’s new boyfriend wrecking our recording schedule, we get into the credits, the music, and the general handsomeness of Omar Sharif. We discuss some Russian history, Boris Pasternak, and whatever a …

This time we discuss Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men, yet another dystopian vision of the future, because the ultimate goal of this podcast, as it turns out, is to depress Mom. She shares some childhood memories and we conclude I am a likeable person. Mom drags in Son of Man, Soylent Green, and Sophie's Choice and I try to understand how films I'v…

This week we get around to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, the most expensive arthouse sequel ever! I was suffering from a sore throat and had no voice after a night out; don’t worry, I edited out most of the painful coughing I had to deal with. We try to remember what the Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner was about (something something wh…

Welcome back for our episode about Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri! If in your culture it’s still acceptable to wish you a happy New Year in February, happy New Year; if not, have a nice Tuesday, I guess. After putting our New Year’s resolution out there to upload more consistently from now on, we venture into rememberin…

Today mom and I discuss Kenneth Branagh’s Thor and Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger! After the shortest coming out I’ve ever done, given how there’s no room for asking questions immediately in this one-way street of a medium, we dive into the local weather. In our end segment What Did We See Without Being Forced?, we talk about A G…

Right on time for our latest episode, Zack Snyder’s (or let’s be real, Joss Whedon’s) Justice League is finally here! I took my mom along for my third viewing and we’re here to give our opinions: mom was glad that she liked one of my comic book movies again, but didn’t know what she signed up for, as I have a lot of issues to work through with this…

In this episode we finally get to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins! That is to say, after we talk about protecting your children from scary movies, my little brother’s school trip, and our own future traveling. We also confuse Mr. Beanand Johnny English, try to make sense of Batman’s “no killing” rule, mom insults Cillian Murphy’s face for a bit, …

We continue the MCU with Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk and Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2, and as if mom didn’t have a hard enough time trying to remember two films she slept through parts of, she’s also getting sick. To cheer her up, I try to explain comic connections and tell her trivia about the productions of the just-okay part of Marvel’s Ph…

We get started on The Lord of the Rings epic with Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring! First I had to say sorry for misrepresenting the movie I showed Mom, then we recap all our experiences with The Hobbit trilogy and the Harry Potter octology for some reason. A friend of mine is with us in spirit, even if she didn’t want to actually be on t…

We finally tackle a Marvel movie, starting off with the MCU and therefore Jon Favreau’s Iron Man! As we discuss the film that kicked off the cinematic universe craze, I struggle to keep mom from switching to other films she happens to have seen before the end of the episode and ultimately fail, we discuss ancient technology from the eighties and of…

As mom gets to host her first episode, she steals the remote to make me watch Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me! She also assumes “an Android” is just as clear of a description as “an iPhone” for listeners who want to know what kind of phone she has, doesn’t appreciate my synopsis of the film, calls me negative for calling something the film doesn’t even do…

In our episode on George Lucas’ Star Wars, mom explains how much it made her laugh, she confuses Peter Cushing with Christopher Lee without even knowing the latter ended up in the franchise as well, we speculate on the history of hologram invention without any knowledge on the topic, mom relates the production design to the Cold War, I try to avoid…

In our first double feature, we delve into Leslie H. Martinson's Batman: the Movie and Tim Burton's Batman! Mom doesn't hold back in her varying descriptions of being unable to fathom anyone could take either movie seriously - yes, either - while I try to explain the remaining history of Batman movies. We get sidetracked by various celebrities I've…

As we inevitably return to the DCEU, we discuss Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman! This is therefore the first episode that requires a SPOILER WARNING as it's about a movie that's still in theaters. In it, Mom complains about being dragged into a 3D screening, tries not to swear despite being the cause of this podcast being explicit in the first place, w…

Returning from our unplanned sabbatical, we have our long overdue talk about Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional! We survive a troubled production that would’ve suited the Suicide Squad episode better, remember a surprising amount of names and years we totally didn’t look up, discover how French people are a lot weirder than, yes, even Americans, a…

Returning to the world of Batfleck, I introduce my mom to a bunch of new characters in hopes of a better reception than BvS got. We discuss David Ayer's Suicide Squad, I forget the name of Debbie Harry, my mom talks at length about my thigh, we ramble about other movies that are vaguely related, somehow get into analyzing the decline of the Roman e…

After general laziness helped us procrastinate, we return to discuss Luc Besson’s Lucy. We ignore Scarlett Johansson’s relations to Marvel for some reason, forget the title of Under the Skin, insult the French for a change, and generally stray from the topic at hand since we didn’t record all that soon after watching the movie. Hopefully you’ll enj…

Leaving the genre of comic book movies, we turn to a director most famous for his comic book movies and discuss Christopher Nolan's Memento. We also remember a bunch of dead people you've never heard of and recommend a film you've never heard of by a director you've never heard of. In between desperately trying to stay on topic, we exchange theorie…

In this episode we continue to insult America, get sidetracked by politics, discuss different waves of feminism, I get confused while spelling words, and we talk with a lisp for a while. Also, in less conversational and more long winded fashion I walk my mom through Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (Ultimate Edition) to fill in the gaps she eithe…

Hi and welcome! This is the first episode of Stealing the Remote, a podcast where I make my mom watch whatever I want to! Please enjoy as I assess her complete lack of comics knowledge and introduce her to the world of DC Films through Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. She in turn teaches me things I never knew about pop culture during the decades I didn…