Watchcast Schedule for May 2025: Music To Our Eyes

Greetings, Nextlanders! I hope everyone is having an extremely normal, non-tumultuous week. Oh, who am I kidding? Nobody gets to have those anymore. But regardless of everything going on in games media and the world, I hope you're doing OK.

This month's Watchcast theme is all about a subject very near and dear to my heart: music. Some of these are documentaries, some of these are narrative films, all of them revolve around bands, artists, and scenes. It's an eclectic lineup, and every one of these is one I'm very excited to watch or re-watch. Here's what we've got picked out.

Monday, May 5th: Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

First up is a documentary that Brad's been talking up for what feels like years now, and the only movie on the slate I hadn't had the chance to see before. The debut feature from The Roots' ?uestlove, it covers the various performances and the myriad historical events and social movements that orbited around the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a free, weeks-spanning concert that hosted everyone from BB King to Sly and the Family Stone on its stage.

Purely on the merits of its musical lineup, this movie would already be wildly captivating to me, but the story here is about more than just the festival itself. The summer of '69 is a period of almost non-stop pivotal moments in American history, and this almost forgotten festival exists in tandem with a great number of them. Spoiler: I thought this movie ruled, and hopefully you'll all dig it too.

Where to Watch

Monday, May 12th: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)

Is this month's category just an excuse for me to re-watch three impossibly rich heavy metal musicians shout and groan at one another for two and a half hours? Not entirely. It's also a chance for me to revisit the conditions that led to the creation of St. Anger, what I consider to be one of the most fascinatingly terrible albums a major band has ever put out.

This doc captures the frequently interrupted period when Metallica lost bassist Jason Newstead, began endlessly infighting with one another, and resorted to band therapy to try to pull it all back together. You don't see huge acts like this behave like such dickweeds in front of a camera, usually. Typically artists like to buff all those rough edges off before putting themselves before the world. This movie is nothing but rough edges and endless embarrassing behavior, but with the understanding that, little by little, all that frustration and arguing begins to coalesce into new understanding and creative output. Again, that output resulted in a truly awful album, but what can you do?

Where to Watch

Monday, May 19th: Frank (2014)

Every month there's gonna be one of these that is entirely a "for me" movie, and this is the one this month. Very loosely based on British comedian/musician Chris Sievey's Frank Sidebottom character, Domhnall Gleeson plays a young musician who finds his way into the orbit of an exceptional (and eccentric) indie band, fronted by Michael Fassbender's Frank, a peculiar musical genius who wears a big cartoon head everywhere.

You could probably best describe this movie as a dark comedy, but there's also a genuine examination here of the bizarre, often inexplicable chemistry needed for a band to be good, and how easily that can be disrupted. This aspect majorly resonated with me as someone who has been in some bands over the years and has witnessed first hand just how delicate that chemistry can be. The cartoon head thing is not nearly as distracting as you might think at first, and the actors are killing it across the board. Crossing my fingers that you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

Where to Watch

Monday, May 26th: That Thing You Do (1996)

This one's come up often enough of late that I felt like it'd be criminal not to include it in this month's lineup. Another personal favorite of mine, this is Tom Hanks' love letter to the rock-'n-roll boom of the '60s, telling the story of a small time band with a big time hit and depicting all the sorts of pitfalls a bunch of young musicians might run into under such circumstances. Hanks both directs and co-stars as the A&R guy assigned to keep these dudes pumping out tunes, and it even has a couple of co-stars from recent Watchcast movie Boiler Room in Tom Everett Scott and Giovanni Ribisi (though Ribisi is in more of a Pete Best role here).

The movie's a gas, and I'm predicting this one to be a favorite among the crew. That said, there are two versions of this movie, and the one we're watching for the podcast is the extended cut. Sometimes "extended cut" means like two or three minutes of extra footage. Here it means FORTY. That extended version does seem to be widely available to stream, but if you do end up with the shorter theatrical cut, don't fret. We'll definitely highlight which parts have been added in the longer cut.

Where to Watch

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And that's the month! And don't forget, once we're wrapped here we've got a couple of big events coming up for the Watchcast. At the end of the That Thing You Do episode, I will be unveiling my own ordered Watchcast list to rival Vinny's. And once we're done with this month's theme, it's on to the long overdue Star Trek summer, as we tackle the original series' second season. As always, thanks for listening and watching along with us. We'll see you at the movies!