Low Key

Spoilers abound as we discuss Jane Campion's masterful Western/Hitchcockian thriller The Power of the Dog. It's the rare movie that turns out at the end to be a completely different movie — and even in a completely different genre — than we thought at the beginning. We explore questions like: —who or what "the dog" of the title is—performative masculinity—whether there's a bad guy—Peter's sexuality—whether Rose was ever good at pianoWe hope you enjoy listening this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Don't Look Up is a divisive movie, and your hosts are appropriately divided. Keith found parts of it funny but overall found it all too unbelievable, while Aaron and Tim embrace the absurd — or is it? — metaphor at the center of the film. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

8-Bit Christmas features Neil Patrick Harris as a modern-day dad telling his daughter the very '80s story of his quest for a Nintendo. It's packed with knowing '80s references like the Cabbage Patch Kid crisis and deep cuts like the infamous Billy Ripken "f--- face" card, and owes obvious debts to the '80s classics A Christmas Story and The Princess Bride. Tim, a child of the '80s, and Keith and Aaron, children of the '90s, have different levels of enthusiasm for the HBO Max film: Keith finally asks Tim: Are you maybe a little too close to this material? But this is a fun conversation that veers merrily into why dads don't build treehouses anymore, the best dumb Christmas movies, and, of course, true meaning of the holidays. Merry Christmas, f--- face. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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In by far our favorite episode, we take a break from talking about movies other people made and talk about "The Moment" — a thoughtful and moving romance written and directed by your very own Low Key co-host, Keith Dennie! Joining us is "The Moment" producer Charles W. Bush, who helped bring the film to life. Charles and Keith talk about every element of the film, from Keith's grounded, emotional script to a mini-crisis caused by a theft at a key point in the production — and how "The Moment" team worked together to bring the film to the screen. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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The newish Netflix action film Kate stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an assassin in Japan, working for a mentor played by Woody Harrelson. It's full of tropes — the last job, the assassin who bonds with a young woman — but they worked for us. It's got bright lights, rampant anime influences, and great music. We just wish there was a little less backstory and a little more of Kate fighting Yakuza henchmen. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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We start this episode by talking about why we love Disney+'s What If, which scrambles and tweaks our favorite Marvel stories to imagine how they might have gone a little differently. The, inspired by What If, we think about the many directions into which the MCU could go — how will the X-Men come into play? What's up with the Spideyverse? And which of our predictions have come true so far?Then Tim makes his silly case for why Tom Cruise should play Wolverine. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode: Paper Tigers! Featuring very special guest Sam from the Sam Said It podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Gunn's The Suicide Squad doesn't give its characters much plot armor — that enchanted substance, created by corporations and screenwriters, that protects bankable characters from dying, no matter what.Will Bloodsport (Idris Elba) make it through the mission alive? Will Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie)? Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnamon)? Nothing is guaranteed, and it's no spoiler to say some of the characters we like most don't make it out of The Suicide Squad alive. Spoiler alert: The movie's called The Suicide Squad.We talk about how the scarcity of plot armor makes The Suicide Squad far more compelling than most comic-book movies — as well as the state of DC movies in general. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in The Last Mercenary, a new Netflix French film about a master-of-disguise mercenary named The Mist (Van Damme) who comes out of hiding when a bureaucratic error threatens the safety of his long-lost son. There's also a race to keep something called The Big Mac from falling into the wrong hands. But it's so much more needlessly complicated than that.The Last Mercenary makes you ask all the wrong questions you should be asking during an action movie, including: Could I beat up all these characters? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A bold decision by Kevin Smith in the new Netflix series Masters of the Universe: Revelations has angered some fans of the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. We talk about how the decision actually solves a big problem with He-Man — and share a personal theory about why Adam has been less than honest with Teela for the last 40 years or so.There are also lots of '80s and '90s-focused side discussions this episode about Sonic the Hedgehog, Sailor Moon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and everyone's favorite Saturday morning cartoon, Shirt Tails. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The very prolific Steven Soderbergh takes Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta, Jon Hamm, Julia Fox, Amy Seimetz, and many more top actors through a complicated scheme in 1950s Detroit, when society and the auto industry are on the brink of major change.All that time you've spent reading up on fuel emission standards will finally be rewarded. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Summer of Soul, the directorial debut from Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, takes us back to Harlem in 1969 for a series of concerts that included a who's who of brilliant Black artists, from Stevie Wonder to Nina Simone to Sly and the Family Stone to Mahalia Jackson, among many, many more.Tim, Aaron and Keith had pretty different reactions to the film, which almost never came to be: For more than 50 years, the footage languished, rejected by white executives who didn't think there would be a wide audience for a film about "the Black Woodstock."We also talk about the unrest in 1969 compared to the racial dynamics in America today, and why the George Floyd murder captured people's attention — at least for a time — when so many others didn't.Also: Tim wrote this about why Jimi Hendrix couldn't play the Harlem Cultural Festival, and Keith is sick of so many movies taking place in New York and L.A. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, dads Aaron and Tim and non-dad Keith discuss the Kevin Hart Netflix comedy Fatherhood, about a dad struggling to raise his very young daughter alone. We talk about diapers, dumb preschools, what the first steps look like, and lots of other dad stuff, and what we love and fear about raising kids.Also: Shoutout to a notorious Memphis roller coaster, the perfect metaphor for parenthood. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

At some point last week, everyone watching Loki collectively decided the Time-Keepers were full of shit. For Keith and Tim, co-hosts of the Low Key podcast, that moment occurred in this episode, when co-host Aaron broke it all down for them.We also talk about Kang the Conquerer and some other fun theories. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sweet Tooth is your typical coming of age tale about a post-apocalyptic, pandemic scorched Earth with a human-deer hybrid kid searching for his lost mother in the (mostly) lawless Western United States - average Netflix stuff, right?The story from the show differs greatly in some aspects from the Vertigo comic book of the same name. The changes aren’t as drastic as The Walking Dead where we witness several seasons of new characters, but Sweet Tooth’s source material is actually much darker than what we see in the Netflix series. This doesn’t mean Sweet Tooth is devoid of shocking moments and troubling realizations. Scenes dealing with suspected viral infection are mundane and horrific simultaneously since it feels like these outcomes would also feel natural in our world if a pandemic were ever this catastrophic.This week on the Low Key podcast, Aaron Lanton and Keith Dennie are joined by guest extraordinaire Sam (“Sam Said It” podcast) to talk about why the show works, how adults coped with the apocalypse, an