Episode 15-Dr Strangelove What could possibly be worse than Peter Sellers? Peter Sellers times 3. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 nuclear war black comedy, Dr Strangelove, England’s greatest comic actor plays three separate characters and Damian Asher doesn’t like it. Does three times the Sellers = three times the hate from the normally benign Stanley Ku…

Episode 15-Bram Stoker's Dracula Who is the best Dracula? Is it Bela Lugosi’s suave count, Christopher Lee’s aristocratic Prince of Darkness, Max Shrek’s rat faced Nosferatu… or Gary Oldman’s lovelorn immortal who has crossed oceans of time to romance Winona Rider in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Well, if you're Adam Nightingale it …

Episode 14-Kill Bill Vol 2 In the second part of our first two-parter, Punching Up punches up at its first sequel, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 2. Damian perpetuates his beef with QT’s roaring, raging, rampage of revenging but narrows his focus to the eponymous Bill himself. Damian doesn’t like David Carradine’s performance. Adam tries manfull…

Episode 13-Kill Bill Volume 1 In this episode Damian and Adam don’t so much punch up but chop down, with a katana sword (or to be more precise, a Hattori Hanzo sword), as it is time to kill Kill Bill, or kill Kill Bill Volume 1 (to be even more precise), Quention Tarantino’s martial arts masterpiece of retribution and revenge. So, expect 450 gallon…

Episode 12-Bande a Part In the immortal words of Thin Lizzy (or that blues band that played in 48 Hours), The Boys Are Back In Town. That's right, Punching Up The Movie Podcast is back. This week we take shots at one of the pioneers of the French Nouvelle Vague cinema, Maoist essayist and intellectual contrarian, Jean Luc Godard and his supposedly …

Episode 11-EASY RIDER (1969) Two men went looking for a podcast and couldn’t find it anywhere. On this episode Adam takes a swing at the biker movie, road movie, hippytastic gamechanger that singlehandedly launched the New Hollywood, 1969’s Easy Rider, not realizing that it is one of Damian’s favourite movies. Will their friendship survive, or will…

Episode 10-THE DEPARTED (2006) What has poor Martin Scorsese done to annoy the Punching Up team? Our series hasn’t been going that long and this is the third time around for America’s greatest living director. It’s beginning to look like a lot like bullying. This time it’s the turn of The Departed, Scorsese’s Boston-based Irish-American remake of t…

Episode 9-HARD BOILED (1992) Can an action movie have too much action? Punching Up’s Adam thinks so. Is John Woo’s cop vs triads cult classic, Hard Boiled really better than a dozen Die Hards, or does it suffer from a terminal case of the try-hards? Adam thinks it does. Is John Woo really the Mozart of Mayhem, or is he actually the Andre Rieu of Ch…

Episode 8-ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017) What happens when the weight of expectations ruins an experience? Find out in the latest Punching Up episode when Adam and Damian discuss the cult fave from a few years ago, Japanese film One Cut of the Dead directed by Shin'ichirō Ueda. Who liked it? Who didn't? Did the old geezers agree, disagree or fall somew…

Episode 7-SHAFT (1971) According to the legendary Isaac Hayes, John Shaft is a “Bad Mutha” as well as being a “sex machine to all the chicks,” whilst also being a “complicated man… who will risk his neck for his brother man.” But is the 1971 Blaxploitation classic that bears his name any good? While fully and freely conceding Shaft’s status as a ci…

Episode 6-Inception (2010) It’s a Punching Up first!!!!! Damian has decided to play the bad guy this time and has nominated Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending sci-fi actioner Inception for the Punching Up (TM) treatment. The normally misanthropic Adam is attempting to defend Nolan’s dream-within-a-dream..…within a dream masterpiece. So, will it be sw…

Episode 5a-KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON AT FREDDY'S Punching Up is back with a mini episode before we launch Season 2. It’s Punching Up’s first re-match. For the second time, Damian and Adam have the great man Scorsese in their sights, taking Marty to task for the inordinate length of his latest smash, Killers of the Flower Moon. His blood still up, …

Episode 5-CAT BALLOU (1965) You can’t accuse Adam Nightingale of not being objective. In this episode, Adam punches up at one of his favourite actors, Lee Marvin for his outrageous Oscar-winning performance in the comedy musical western Cat Ballou. Damian and Adam discuss why great actors often get rewarded for awful performances. But Adam is also …

Episode 4: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) It’s episode 4 and this time Adam Nightingale takes Sergio Leone’s Italian cowboy epic to task for its torturous length and lofty pretensions. Damian Asher honestly can’t understand what Adam could possibly have against this cinematic masterpiece. So, is Sergio Leone’s deconstruction of the semi-mythic…

Episode 3: YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) Buggin and mugging with Marty and Gene The Punching Up Movie Podcast tackles its first comedy, Mel Brook’s 1974 spoof of the classic Universal Frankenstein movies. Adam cannot stand the OTT comedy mugging of Marty Feldman and Gene Wilder but likes the musical comedy. Damian likes the movie but doesn’t like music…

Episode 2-RAGING BULL (1980) Can an actor be too good at their job? Adam Nightingale seems to think so, taking Robert de Niro to task for far too successfully inhabiting the role of the charmless, misogynistic, ultimately alienating pugilist Jake La Motta. Damian Asher is not so sure. Spoiler warning! Adam and Damian casually spoil the endings of G…

Episode 1-2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) “In space, no one can hear you yawn!” Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 ground-breaking sci-fi classic is Damian Asher’s favourite film of all time. Adam Nightingale thinks it is boring. Will this difference of opinion destroy their friendship and wreck the podcast before it has even started? Probably not. It’s only a mov…

2001: A Space Odyssey “In space, no one can hear you yawn!”By punchingupmoviepodcast

Punching Up The Movie Podcast The Punching Up movie podcast takes to task great films from the canon, both cult classics and beloved popular cinematic movies that Adam or Damian may have a problem with. Each episode they will take on a behemoth and attempt to dissect, rediscover and sometimes disassemble the perceived classic film. Sick of people p…