Diminishing Returns

The ever informative Dr. Wendy Walsh (Mating Matters, Time Magazine Person of the Year 2017) joins us to discuss classic rom-com Pretty Woman (and to psychoanalyse Allen's sex-life). Is the classic Julia Roberts / Richard Gere pairing a fluffy fairytale dream or an insidious, problematic nightmare? Listen to find out.

In a heartfelt apology for the hilarious April Fools' prank we pulled last month, here's a sincere, legitimate bit of film analysis focused in on the 2006 version of Casino Royale - the real one, starring Daniel Craig - that you wanted to hear us discuss in the first place.

It's the fifth annual Diminishing Returns Oscars special, in which Sol and Allen review each of 2021's Best Picture nominees in the order of least to most diverse.

With the new Mortal Kombat movie in our sights, Diminishing Returns take a trip back to 1995's cinematic abomination, directed by Sol's arch-enemy, Paul W.S. Anderson. Joining us for this, as well as a look at 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, is writer, host of Stream Economy and Senior Editor of CNET, Ashley Esqueda!

It's an exciting week at Diminishing Returns as we're joined by Calvin Dyson to finally discuss Casino Royale. Will this be the James Bond movie to win over Sol and Allen?

It's time for our annual Diminishing Returns Easter Special where we take a look at a piece of religious cinema. We let Patreon choose the film we'd cover and they wanted The Wicker Man. We threw in the awkward spiritual sequel The Wicker Tree as well, because we're nice like that. There's even talk of the unmade third Wicker Man movie, The Wrath of the Gods.

To celebrate our landmark 250th episode, we let our Patreon-subscribers decide which film we should cover again (out of everything in our first 200 episodes). They wanted us to do You Only Live Twice... twice.

We technically covered King Kong vs. Godzilla back during our King Kong episode in 2017 (episode #40) but Godzilla set an early precedent for "raiding again" and so, this week, we're joined by film-maker and critic, James Perkins, for an enthusiastic Diminishing Returns kaiju-konversation©. We had to do something what with Godzilla vs. Kong coming out later this month!

The first of many 2020 Coronavirus time-capsule episodes where we covered a film tying into a new release, only for the film to be yanked from the schedule at the last minute. This time, it's our Coming to America episode, tying into Coming 2 America, which is out on Amazon Prime Video this week.

Fight choreographer and stage-combat instructor, Kiel O'Shea, stops by to help Diminishing Returns dissect Ridley Scott's Gladiator.

What is this? A crossover episode? Yes. Diminishing Returns collides with The British Sitcom History Podcast this week, with a look at the 1972 film spin-off of classic sitcom Steptoe and Son.

It's Valentine's Day so things are about to get sexy. But it's also a Kubrick episode so things are probably also about to get cold and meticulous and obsessive. Phwoar!

Diminishing Returns are joined by Alana Johnston to tackle the divisive WW84 (or Wonder Woman 1984, depending on who you ask). To quote Alana: "It's a wild ride".

We forgot to delay our episode when Escape Room 2's release got delayed from this week, so screw it. Here's an episode about Escape Room featuring Calvin!

We're keeping things highbrow, this year, as we follow last week's Kes episode with an episode (finally) tackling the enigma that is Werner Herzog. Joining us to look at his 1977 film, Stroszek, is one of our most exciting guests to date: Herzog-expert, Dallas Campbell!

We're joined by Lianna Holston and Siena Jeakle of Frankly, My Dear, a podcast where two people who don't watch movies watch their way through the AFI Top 100. Given that we're British, we thought we'd subject them to something from the BFI Top 100, instead, so here we are: Ken Loach's classic slice of social realist drama, Kes.

Introducing Wandy Newman Sings Diminishing Returns, the brand new album featuring never-before-heard outtakes from past Diminishing Returns recording sessions!

We're so nearly there... 2020 is nearly over. But first, we need to have a frank discussion about Peninsula, Tremors: Shrieker Island, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Tenet, Bill & Ted Face the Music, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Mank... in that order. Also: a fun music quiz. Who will win? Allen or Calvin?

It's that time again where we release truncated Diminisode edits from our Patreon (available for $1 a month at patreon.com/dimreturns) into the wild alongside a whole load of extra commentary, quiz games and more! This week covers Cats, Bad Boys for Life, Dolittle, Sonic the Hedgehog, the 2020 Oscars, The Jesus Rolls and the live-action remake of Mulan. Come back next week for the rest of 2020 including Tenet, Mank and more!

As is now Christmas tradition, we threw a selection of Christmas movies out to our Patreon subscribers and let them choose which one we should cover for what is now the fifth Christmas special of Diminishing Returns (that's almost as many as One Foot in the Grave). They chose Die Hard, so Calvin was furious - hear all about it, now!