Reel Talk & Banter
Ever wanted to just sit around and make fun of an old movie with your friends? That's exactly what Reel Talk & Banter is all about. Join best friends Omari Williams and Jay Richardson as they rewatch movies that came out at least a decade ago. It's a mix of a film review and a comedy roast, where they discuss everything from the plot to the terrible acting, and even if the film has stood the test of time. Get ready to laugh and hear some hot takes on your favorite (and least favorite) classic films.
Episodes
36 episodes
A Surveillance Job Turns Into A Moral Crisis: The Conversation (1974)
He’s a professional eavesdropper who builds his life around locks, alarms, and silence, then one job cracks the whole system. We’re reviewing Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 neo-noir mystery thriller The Conversation, and we keep coming back to the...
The Murder Tentacles Made Me Do It: Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Spider-Man 2 has a reputation that’s almost unfair: “best Spider-Man movie,” “top superhero film,” “one of the great sequels.” So we hit play and put that legacy on trial. We’re Omari Williams and Jay Richardson, and we go beat-by-beat through ...
Never Help A Guy With A Cast: Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Hannibal Lecter wins Best Actor with about 16 minutes of screen time, and somehow it still makes perfect sense. We rewatch The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and pull apart the machinery that turns a quiet psychological thriller into one of the mo...
Dorothy Dropped Two Bodies And We Need To Talk: The Wiz (1978)
Oz isn’t a shiny kingdom here. It’s a gritty, graffiti-smeared 1970s New York City dreamscape where trash cans can attack you, the subway feels like a horror movie, and the Yellow Brick Road might be a line of taxi cabs that the film forgets ab...
You Maniacs!...You Blew It Up!...:Planet of the Apes (1968)
A single broken monument turns a sci-fi adventure into an accusation, and Planet Of The Apes (1968) still knows exactly how to twist the knife. We sit down and rewatch the original film with a mix of respect, skepticism, and a lot of side-eye f...
The Saddest Movie You Will Love And Never Rewatch: Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
The first minute tells you where this is headed, and it still doesn’t prepare you for the weight of it. We sit down with Grave of the Fireflies, the 1988 Japanese animated war film directed by Isao Takahata, and talk about why it’s regularly ca...
A Tree, What is a Tree?: Supergirl (1985)
A superhero movie with a $35 million budget should not leave us asking, “Did you see the wire?” But that is exactly where our heads go after revisiting Supergirl (1984), the oddball DC spinoff that time mostly left behind. We are Omari Williams...
You've Got a Friend in Us: Toy Story (1995)
Toy Story is one of those movies everyone thinks they remember, until you rewatch it and realize it’s sharper, funnier, and a lot more complicated than you gave it credit for. We go back to 1995 and talk about how Pixar’s first feature became t...
Disney’s Darkest Friendship Tale: The Fox and the Hound (1981)
A fox and a hunting dog promise they’ll be friends forever, then adulthood shows up with a leash, a shotgun, and a job description. We’re rewatching Disney’s The Fox and the Hound (1981) and treating it like what it really is: a Disney Dark Age...
A Classic Sci-Fi Rewatch Reality Check: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
A movie can be legendary and still not be an easy watch. We finally sit down with Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and come away torn: the practical effects, cinematography, and John Williams score remind us why this 1977 s...
When Science Outruns Humility What Breaks First: Jurassic Park (1993)
A dinosaur theme park sounds like pure childhood wish fulfillment until you remember one detail: it’s built by humans. We’re revisiting Jurassic Park (1993) with grown-up skepticism and the same wide-eyed awe, and the result is a Real Talk and ...
Certainty is an Emotion, Not a Fact: Doubt (2008)
You can feel the temperature drop the moment Doubt (2008) begins. A Catholic priest delivers a sermon on doubt, and within minutes we’re watching a 1964 Bronx school tighten into suspicion, certainty, and quiet fear. We’re Omari Williams and Ja...
The Pinky Toe Shot Heard Round Harlem: Harlem Nights (1989)
Harlem Nights should be an automatic win: Eddie Murphy on the director’s chair, Richard Pryor as the veteran counterweight, and Red Fox walking in and stealing oxygen from every room he enters. Then we hit play and immediately split. One of us ...
[MEGA POD] Happy Mother's Day!: Bad Moms (2016)
A PTA bake sale shouldn’t feel like a battleground, but Bad Moms turns school politics, mom guilt, and the pressure to “do it all” into a full-blown comedy war and we had to talk about it. For our Mother’s Day crossover, we’re joined by Jehrel ...
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When Cloudless Skies Thunder, Stand Fast: Immortals (2011)
Stand your ground. Fight for the people beside you. Fight for a future worth remembering. We start with the rallying words that Immortals wants to burn into your brain, then we ask the question the movie keeps dodging: does it actually earn any...
Everyone Guard Your Loins And Take Notes: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Miranda Priestly walks into Runway and an entire floor panics, and that alone tells you what kind of movie The Devil Wears Prada really is. We rewatch the 2006 film with fresh eyes and realize it plays less like a cute career comedy and more li...
Belly Feels Like A Mixtape With Cameras: Belly (1998)
Belly has a reputation that travels on pure memory: iconic lighting, a hard soundtrack, two hip hop giants on screen, and that feeling you had the first time you saw it. Then you hit play again and realize the real question isn’t “Is it a class...
Shadow the Leader, Sassy the Charm, Chance the Heart, and Bob the Villain: Homeward Bound (1993)
That moment when Chance crests the hill and sprints toward Jamie still gives us chills, and we’re not even pretending otherwise. We grew up on Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, so coming back to this 1993 family movie feels like opening a...
Fred Willard Explains Dogs Like He Just Met One: Best In Show (2000)
A movie about a dog show somehow turns into a full-on personality test, and our reactions could not be more different. We’re talking Best in Show, Christopher Guest’s mockumentary where the dogs are basically props and the real comedy is watchi...
...Mean Bastards You Need to Hang!: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Snow, paranoia, and eight strangers who all feel guilty of something. We go back to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and review it the way it begs to be watched: as a chaptered Western mystery thriller where every story might be a lie and ...
A Cult Classic In Heels: Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
Three larger-than-life movie stars. Full drag. A bright yellow Cadillac. And a 1995 road trip comedy that still sparks arguments nearly 30 years later. We’re revisiting *To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar* with zero nostalgia gogg...
When The Government Picks You For Target Practice: Enemy of the State (1998)
We revisit Enemy of the State and realize it hits even harder nearly 30 years later, once you map its paranoia onto today’s surveillance reality. We track how a random tape turns Will Smith’s life into a controlled demolition and why Gene Hackm...
How Scream Revived The Slasher And Birthed A Meta Horror Era: Scream (1996)
What happens when a slasher knows you know the rules? We dive back into Scream (1996) and unpack why that opening phone call still rattles the nerves, how the film smuggles a satire inside a straight-up thriller, and where its physics-defying m...
Four Friends, One Plan, And The Cost Of Survival: Set It Off (1996)
We revisit Set It Off to celebrate Black History Month and unpack why a 90s heist film still cuts close today. We balance the laughs and chemistry with the film’s gutting realism on policing, poverty, and the price of survival.
Unpacking Sex, Power, And 80s Brooklyn : She's Gotta Have It (1986)
A black-and-white indie that still feels loud. We dive into Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It and sit with the shockwaves it sent through 80s cinema: a black woman who won’t apologize for desire, three men who try to define her, and a city that f...