We do not always have the time for a two-hour movie. No one ever wants to sit down and watch a one-hour TV drama knowing that they might not be able to stick around for an entire second episode. With this said, 90-minutes (perhaps 75, maybe 99) is the ideal runtime. This concise time has given us some of the most rewatchable movies that may not win any Academy Awards, but are properly fun-sized for the audience. That is what NinetyForChill.com is all about, the fun-sized sweets be it experimental terror, outlandish horror, over-the-top action, or the most radical comedies and dramas. Your host Russ Stevens and his friends chat about the movies that require few cuts to put on basic cable when it comes to fitting into a two-hour time slot and embrace all the craziness that the censors will need to bleep or blur.
Episodes
Tuesday Aug 29, 2023
Tuesday Aug 29, 2023
This episode of NinetyForChill may serve as a personality profile of its host, CatBusRuss. Since 1997 and "The Fifth Element", he has been a fan and apologist of Milla Jovovich. Her direct-to-video features do not scare him off, so he was intrigued by "Paradise Hills". Neil Marshall's "Doomsday" is one of his favorite movies. It would not be fair to Marshall if Russ did not check out his collaboration with Jovovich, the "Hellboy" reboot.
ThePoeticCritic is more of an influence of her little brother than he would like to acknowledge, but this lead him to give "Class Action Park" a viewing. That feature is about a very eighties attitude. Thus, it inspired him to finally watch the "Risky Business" DVD provided to him by Ally Higgins of Ally's Accessories Shop on Etsy. Another disc Ally gave her ex-boyfriend was a no budget horror movie from 2016 called "Nocturne". After that trash feature, CatBus needs to reminisce about a good gore film, so it is only fitting that "Spiral: From the Book of Saw" was the first movie he saw after cinemas finally reopened.
Monday Aug 21, 2023
Monday Aug 21, 2023
CatBusRuss is doing his best to overcome exhaustion. Fan Expo Chicago calls for exploration means there was no time for relaxation. Our host has worked himself sick, so he felt lucky to get in three movies since returning from Rosemont. And after starting the week with his Netflix DVD rental, "Another Earth", getting up the energy to watch 1979's "The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe" and 2022's "Thor: Love and Thunder" should be considered an accomplishment.
These three movies are all worthwhile. "Another Earth" is science fiction that challenges the genre's demand for visual effects. The adaptation of the first "Chronicle of Narnia" is an interesting attempt to sneak Christianity into schools. And while avoiding films in the franchise that are based around a new characters, Russ has enjoyed diving into Phase 4 of the MCU.
But all of these features present challenges to enjoy them. There is a very dour premise with the indie film. The cartoon features questionable character designs that make you wonder why they did not stick to their "Charlie Brown" style. And you can see why there are three credited editors on the Marvel movie. It is definitely going to be a one flick movie this week for the CatBus. His strength must be regained.
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
Tuesday Aug 15, 2023
CatBusRuss has made it back to Champaign/Urbana from taking his big sister, ThePoeticCritic, up to Chicago Fan Expo 2023. There was plenty of fun to be had, but there is a lot of stress that comes with planning to have the maximum amount of enjoyment.
The Fan Expo takeover of Wizard World (formerly Chicago Comic Con) has led to more blatant efforts to take every possible penny from the convention goers. And taking money from Netflix, WBDiscovery, NBCUniversal, and Disney while cracking down on what actors could and could not say was almost too much hypocrisy for our host to endure.
He felt that the standard panels that were for fans by fans were lacking, and the cool vendors seemed to stay away from the event. Fortunately, Russ had autographs to track down to make up for this time, but the con is becoming less and less intimate. The time was filled and (too) many cool things were bought, but the 2024 reducing itself to three days from four may be a blessing.
The CatBus had been dropping daily bonus episodes on ninetyforchill.com when it came to the first three days of the convention. This episode is a review of Fan Expo overall, followed by those three bonus podcasts.
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
CatBusRuss returns to his blogging roots. This episode is dedicated to "Arena" from 1989. Our host wrote a review for this Charles Band produced feature back in 2019, and it caught the attention of one of the premier nerdy minds in the Champaign/Urbana metroplex, Tim Bates of Evil Penguin Games. Tim has had a big influence on his fellow retail geeks, like friend of the show Kodiak Thompson, by exposing them to media like the "John Dies at the End" franchise.
Tim and Russ have essentially been working together the past six years, but it was not until the CatBus shared his review of this feature on Facebook did the two expand their conversations from complaining about customers to movies. "Arena" was one of Tim's favorite movies growing up and at one time he owned a VHS copy of it. As for our host's relationship with the film, it took him 30 years to get around to it.
His fascination with gaudy, low-budget faire had only started in 2009. But he remembers growing up on early eighties "Star Wars" knock offs. Add in a tournament fighting element, and Russ wishes his cinema snobbiness had passed decades prior.
This is not to say that Russ has totally abandoned being a cinematic elitist. He still is a tired of a lot of big-budget studio films, but he knows dissing the mere concept of them may not be fair. Russ liked the first three phases of the MCU, so despite the fatigue towards the series, the fear of being too judgmental means he must continue with MCTuesday. For this installment, the feature he takes on is Sam Raimi's "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness".
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
Tuesday Aug 01, 2023
In this superhero, mega-budget obsessed world, it is easy to understand the regular movie goer's mindset that if something is cheap, it cannot be good. The feature will definitely not be exciting. Excitement is overrated, but a little heart in direction and a good script can make any five-figure budget worthwhile. Too bad exploitation encourages quick products over quality.
CatBusRuss's recent visit to Ally's Accessories Shop on Etsy's "Trash Feature Revue" resulted in him finding "Killjoy", a killer clown, black-exploitation film that was all about taking the cash from any sucker. Thank science that this came as part of the nine-picture "Puppet Master" collection, but it is disheartening that Charles Band lacks quality control over what he puts his name on.
And then you have the likes of The Cinema Snob who preaches do not take rip offs of your favorite movies personally. His suggestion that I need to see "Shocking Dark (officially "Bruno Mattei's Terminator 2") proved otherwise.
This left our host in a state that maybe he did not know what good no-budget cinema was. Thankfully revisiting Ryan Thompson's "Zombie Apocalypse" and Marc Fratto's "Zombies Anonymous" showed the Cat Bus that there is still plenty of gold to be mined from aspiring filmmakers who cannot afford 4K or 35 mm cameras.
Monday Jul 24, 2023
Monday Jul 24, 2023
Help NinetyForChill: The #Podcast get away from paywalls by subscribing to "Ninety For Chill: The Podcast with CatBusRuss".
CatBusRuss goes home to deal with plumbing issues at the folks’ house, but primarily to check out his first Quad Con with ThePoeticCritic. His big sister said, and was right, that this is really just a toy con, but there were some celebrities who had booths. If it was not for The Cinema Snob advertising his appearance, our host may have stayed in Urbana to catch up on “AEW: Fight Forever.” It all proved worthwhile thanks to some conversation with the YouTube legend and some great fan art across from his table.
Monday Jul 17, 2023
Monday Jul 17, 2023
Sam Marsh is a lot like the aliens who seek political sanctuary in the "Men in Black" franchise. CatBusRuss thinks that is a fair thing to say because this is his first podcast guest who is from the Mastodon social media platform. Most people consider that to be another planet. Our guest is just like a Martian minding his own business and make a living on the Internet (vis-a-vis Earth), but has a lot to offer this planet. He feels there is no need to draw attention to himself.
But attention should be drawn to the first "Men in Black" feature from 1997. It is one of the few blockbuster smashes from the Nineties that is under 100 minutes in length. Our host was developing his cynicism for bloated movies at that time, so he just assumed it would not qualify for the podcast. He had not really given the rest of a franchise a chance. That is not really fair, so thank you Smarshian for bringing it back the CatBus to a simpler cinematic time.
There is a lot of audio foreplay in this episode. With MCU Next Tuesday being promised last week, Russ had to give "Black Widow" a watch. That is just something that can be denied. "Men in Black Widow", that could be a Marvel crossover event, or a Marvel porno parody.
Tuesday Jul 11, 2023
Tuesday Jul 11, 2023
CatBusRuss has figured a way to kill two birds with one stone. It is now a question of how to get to that stone. Enjoying the physical media release of "Sisu" might be the perfect place to start.
Our host felt inspired to throw the planned Ally's Accessories Shop on Etsy Trash Feature Revue Triple Feature aside to tackle something that just made it to retailer shelves. This almost made the task of finding a Redbox that carried this Finnish, English-language action film fun.
Russ laments about the need for video stores to return and how he will be tackling the biggest movies in Hollywood in the future with the series "MCU Next Tuesday".
Tuesday Jul 04, 2023
Tuesday Jul 04, 2023
CatBusRuss gets himself ready for the five hours of driving to and from C2E2 by playing back a pair of conversations with his travel companion, ThePoeticCritic. These discussions are where the two siblings have to come to terms with how they may now be the biggest cinema snobs in Central Illinois. Our host was a little more resistant in fully embracing that Martin Scorsese is right to bash the negative effects that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had on creativity in Hollywood, but once his big sister informed of him of the Disney Drones' disdain for Seventies auteurs, he knows what side to stand on. This sounds like a dyer podcast, but it allows us the chance to further praise Kubrick, Allen, Cronenberg, all things Criterion, and Bigelow's most fun movie, "Near Dark". The cinematic salad ThePoeticCritic is presenting maybe better described as Chicago-style Popcorn. It is a mega podcast where you just need to embrace the cheesy and the sweet.
Tuesday Jun 27, 2023
Tuesday Jun 27, 2023
CatBusRuss finally got to celebrate his 40th birthday with the London trip his dad wanted to go on three years ago. It was centered around Cubs baseball, but that victory over the Cardinals (Series split, but it is England, so let us considerate an aggregate win of 14-8.) only took up so much time. He had to amuse himself on the flight and the one day with no American pastime.
Thanks to United Airlines entertainment system, a movie marathon was formed. Russ finally caught up on “The Banshees of Inisherin” on the way to England. The flick is 1:53, but the other feature was “Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark” at 1:05, so it balances out to 90 minutes per show. When there was no baseball, the Stevenses went and saw “The Book of Mormon” on the West End. And the flight home was an Isabella Rossellini double feature of “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” and Robert Zemeckis’s “Death Becomes Her”. Another interesting line up the CatBus would love to have a theater to moderate for.
This episode was recorded using the "Spotify for Podcasters" app with no computers to reference information from. Let me apologize for butchering any movie titles and failing to pay proper respect to "Marcel" director Dean Fleischer Camp's.