The Kulturecast

Is it even a movie? That's the question Barry Lyndon has provoked since 1975 — three hours of scenes so composed they look less like cinema than oil paintings that happen to breathe. This week on Required Viewing, Dr. David D. Perlmutter — "the Prof" — drags Stanley Kubrick's most beautiful, most divisive film to the table: the one even Kubrick devotees can't agree is a film at all.

We get into the candlelight Kubrick captured with lenses built for NASA, a production that practically rebuilt a filmmaking industry to exist in 1975, and a static, painterly style that would ripple forward into The Favourite. We wrestle with Ryan O'Neal's passive, buffeted Barry, the narrator who condemns him before he can charm us, and a film so often called "beautiful but empty" — asking whether the emptiness is the whole point. Class as a cage, a scoundrel with no moral agency, and a technical achievement so singular it's a genre of one that simply couldn't be made today.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, take it apart from every angle. New episodes every Thursday.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

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The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

If you missed last week's Rob Zombie goes Haddonfield edition of the show, this week should make as little sense to you as someone watching this movie without having seent the first one. On this episode of the Kulturecast, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the show to continue talking about Rob Zombie's foray into mainstream horror along with discussions about so much more.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

It was the most expensive movie ever made, the punchline of a thousand headlines, and a flop so infamous it got its own nickname. This week on Required Viewing, we bail out Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995) and study it from every angle — separating the film that's actually on screen from the runaway-budget legend that swallowed it whole.

We get into Mad Max on the open ocean, the world-building that still holds up, Dennis Hopper chewing more scenery than the Smokers could ever burn, the environmental anxieties it was early to, and why a movie everyone "knows" was a disaster has quietly floated toward cult reappraisal. Was it the trainwreck history says, or did we all just enjoy watching it sink? Let's find dry land.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, navigate this one.

New episodes every Thursday.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

The last thing the world needs in 2026 is yet another Halloween film but, to be fair, the last thing the world needed in 2007 was yet another Halloween film, especially one directed by Rob Zombie. Given that the film does in fact exist, Movie Meltdown's Bryan Renfro joins the Kulturecast for the first time to talk all about the finer points of reboots, Rob Zombie, and a whole lot more in this oversized part one of a two part series covering the Zombie reboot series.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast

Two guys, a week in wine country, and a whole lot of avoidance. This week on Required Viewing, we uncork Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004) and study it from every angle — why a shaggy road-trip comedy about a failed novelist and a fading actor became the defining midlife-male-sadness movie of its era, and what it's really pouring underneath the pinot.

We get into Payne's gift for making you laugh at people you'd never want to be, Miles as a portrait of self-sabotage dressed up as good taste, wine as the film's central metaphor (yes, that merlot line), and how a small character comedy quietly reshaped an entire industry. Great movie, terrible role models — let's swirl it around.

Media scholar Dr. David D. Perlmutter and Chris Stachiw, Doctor of Podcasting, pour this one out.

New episodes every Thursday.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kulturecast--2883470/support.

———

The Kulturecast is a film and culture podcast from Weirding Way Media, hosted by Chris Stachiw, the Doctor of Podcasting, alongside a rotating table of guest co-hosts. Each week digs into where film and culture meet — and how each one bends the other. Now home to sub-feeds including Required Viewing: A 360° Film Study with Dr. David D. Perlmutter.

New episodes weekly.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-kulturecast/id931361376
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/5wjxip9XVYapYuY12yEaGY.
Back the show: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kulturecast