With Oscar season upon us, Mike and Jay revisit one of the most debated Best Picture winners of the modern era: Crash (2004), Paul Haggis’s ensemble drama about race, prejudice, and the tangled moral collisions of Los Angeles. Hailed in 2005 as urgent and important, and dismissed just as quickly in the years since as heavy-handed and self-congratulatory, Crash now lands in a cultural moment where its subject matter isn’t theory or metaphor, but headline news. Did the Academy get it right, or is this prestige cinema that mistakes volume for insight? After the main review, the guys count down their Bottom Five Stereotypes, spotlighting the most tired, reductive character shortcuts Hollywood keeps pulling from the shelf. Then it’s time for a round of Kick Two, Pick Two celebrating the career of Robert Duvall, before the long-awaited reveal of the listener poll results that will determine which Dueling Double Bills Mike and Jay will be forced to endure for the next episode. And the award for white-guy concern teetering on virtue-signaling goes to... Filmjitsu!

In one of the stranger twists of fate, Mike slaps Jay with the exact movie Jay had been planning to assign next: the sun-bleached slab of questionable ‘80s excess known as Blame It on Rio. The infamous 1984 comedy stars Michael Caine and was directed by Stanley Donen, yes, the very same Stanley Donen who gave us Singin’ in the Rain. This time, however, decorum is tossed aside in favor of ribald “laughs” and some deeply uncomfortable subject matter. Did Jay recoil at the film’s themes and its eyebrow-raising approach to teen sexuality, or is there some strange middle ground where material like this can be examined without completely torching the conversation? The guys dig into it during the main review, and afterward count down their Bottom Five Black Sheep, misfires from Grade-A filmmakers whose D-list efforts quietly lurk in the shadows of otherwise celebrated careers. The guys next play a heart-felt game of Kick Two, Pick Two honoring Catherine O’Hara, the eccentric and endlessly hilarious star of film and television who passed away in late January. Finally, Jay shifts the blame away from Rio and places it squarely onto Mike, unveiling his next punishment: yet another cinematic misadventure dredged from the bottomless pit this podcast proudly calls home.

This week on Filmjitsu, Mike takes on As the Gods Will (2014), Takashi Miike’s candy-colored death-game nightmare where innocent children’s games turn lethally absurd in record time. Equal parts brutal, bizarre, and uncomfortably playful, it’s a film that dares you to keep up as the rules change and the bodies pile up because... reasons? After the main review, the guys unleash their Bottom Five Dolls, spotlighting cinema’s most cursed toys and plastic horrors. From nightmare fuel masquerading as playthings to designs that never should’ve escaped the prop department, this list proves one thing: if it has glassy eyes and a smile, it probably wants to hurt you. Then it’s time for Dueling Double Bills, as the co-hosts weaponize tangentially related films into a pair of competing double features and debate who understood the assignment better. Finally, the cycle of cinematic punishment continues when Mike reveals what fresh hell awaits Jay on the next episode.

On this episode of the podcast that wields films like deadly weapons, Mike bludgeons Jay with a three-hour, brown-toned cudgel of 1997 prestige cinema called The Postman. Another Kevin Costner-as-savior slog, this one delivers its punishment via sheer runtime, self-importance, and, somehow, Tom Petty as the mayor of a post-apocalyptic city. After the main review, pack a lunch and be sure to leave ahead of traffic as the guys discuss their bottom five movie jobs, because somehow there are occupations worse than being a mailman after the end of the world. Then, in a moment of genuine respect amid the carnage, Mike and Jay play a Carl Reiner memorial round of Kick Two, Pick Two, honoring the legendary director behind When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, and countless other comedy classics. Finally, as always, the cycle of movie massacre mayhem continues when Jay reveals what fresh Hell he has waiting for Mike on the next episode!

Just four days before Christmas, the holiday that somehow balances goodwill and rampant consumerism with alarming confidence, Filmjitsu unwraps its latest seasonal offering: a full review of Love Actually. Richard Curtis’s 2003 all-star rom-com is a film that lives in two completely different cultural realities at once: perpetually lodged near the top of “Best Christmas Movies Ever” lists, while also earning a permanent spot on more than a few “Worst Movies of All Time” rankings. And in true Filmjitsu fashion, the co-hosts are split right down the middle: one embracing the movie’s emotional generosity, the other recoiling from its aggressively cozy chaos. After wrestling with the film’s tonal whiplash, the guys count down their Bottom Five Subplots, side stories that feel less “interwoven tapestry” and more “air-dropped from completely different movies,” complete with crowbarred romances, third-act hijacks, and baffling detours involving everything from wolves to heroin. 2025 wraps with a final Dueling Double Bills match, and this time it's so high stakes that listener involvement may be unavoidable. It’s a merry-and-bright holiday special done the Filmjitsu way, which means no one gets what they want… except listeners who had cinematic suffering at the top of their Christmas lists!

Filmjitsu rings in the holidays with Mike wielding a film as a deadly weapon that nobody asked Santa for: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure. A festive disaster more off-putting than kitty kibble fruitcake, and the guys follow it up with their Bottom Five Spin-offs, a rundown of the most unnecessary cinematic continuations ever inflicted on an audience. The co-hosts then return to their year-long Dueling Double Bills stalemate, with a special surprise teased if the tie survives until the upcoming “Year in Review - 'Jitsu Awards” episode. And because holiday vengeance is a Filmjitsu tradition, Jay ensures Mike gets exactly what he deserves—extending their yuletide punishment two episodes! It's all unrwapped on this episode of Filmjitsu: Wielding films as deadly weapons—especially the ones nobody asked Santa for.

Filmjitsu puts a (fashionably late) final piece of candy into your Halloween haul with a review of the 1987 no-budget German exercise in poor taste, Nekromantik. Yeah, it’s about what it sounds like, and yes, it goes exactly where you think it will. But could anyone have predicted that Mike would react so violently to Jay’s cinematic claymore that he’d end up in the hospital? Mike recounts how this infamous slice of exploitation horror led to an actual emergency room visit before the guys count down their Bottom Five Romantic Horrors, a repugnant roll call of films that make love and disgust uncomfortably inseparable. (Spoiler: David Cronenberg shows up because of course he does.) As usual, things wrap with a spirited round of Dueling Double Bills before Mike reveals what’s next for Jay on the upcoming—and somehow still holiday-themed—episode. Yes, the podcast that wields films as deadly weapons has leapt straight from “Happy Halloween” to “Happy Holidays” faster than the seasonal aisle at Target. And honestly… what’s more hurtful than that?

The Filmjitsu Halloween train keeps 'a-rollin' with special guests Justin Santo and Diego Santo-Munoz who join their dad, regular co-host Jay, for an impromptu examination of the entire Final Destination franchise! From death by speeding bus to piercings in uncomfortable places, this horror-heavy episode braves some dangerous and bizarre twists of fate during the main review of every film in this storied series, before diving headfirst into an extended three-person bottom five roundtable about cinematic deaths! From decapitations to shark attacks, and tommy-gunning to scissor-suicide, the Santo clan keep the calendar page pinned to the last day of October! So put down those Hummel Christmas Dolls and re-light your Jack-o-Lantern, because at the podcast that wields films as deadly weapons, Spooky Season is over when we say it's over!