Real Movies Fake History is a podcast where hosts Gari and Mel take a critical eye to movies based on a true story.

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Episodes

Gorillas in the Mist

This time Gari and Mel critique Gorillas in the Mist, the 1988 true story of primatologist Dian Fossey, whose remarkable conservation work with Mountain Gorillas and unsolved murder have become the stuff of legend.

Gladiator

This is it. This is the big one. We finally critique Ridley Scott's Oscar winning Gladiator, starring the formidable Russell Crowe as Maximus Decimus Meridius. He may be a father to a murdered son and a husband to a murdered wife, but does the movie he's starring in hold up after all these years? Mel takes us through the real history of Rome and its gladiatorial combat and gives us the lowdown on the many accurate and inaccurate aspects of the history that's represented.

Nuremberg review

This time we're critiquing the newly released Nuremberg, where Russell Crowe fills the rather large shoes of Nazi leader Herman Göring, who is on trial for a host of appalling crimes against humanity at the newly-established International Military Tribunal. Rami Malek also joins him, playing his eccentric psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley. But is the film any good? We give you the honest appraisal - the movie may be hoping for Oscars, but does it really deliver?

King Richard

We critique the true history behind Will Smith's Oscar winning performance in King Richard, where he plays Richard Williams, the father and coach of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams. We talk about the real reason the family moved to Compton, the complexity of the real people that the movie leaves out, and ask ourselves how the movie holds up against the real story.

Movie Reviews

Featured Posts

Melania review: Ambient Sycophancy

With a production cost of $40 million, and a combined marketing release of $75 million, Melania is certainly the most expensive documentary of all time, an extraordinary fact when one sees the finished result: an inane endeavor, guaranteed to loose money but buy Amazon political influence from the most disturbing and powerful American family of the last hundred years.

Gari’s 10 Best Movies of 2025

Finally it’s time to look back and break down the 10 best movies of 2025. Gari looks back at cinema from the year that was and picks his favorite films that shouldn’t be missed.

Deliver Me From Nowhere review

In Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, it’s with the delicate beauty of blue-collar guilt and unspoken depression that Scott Copper paints a film so brimming with addictive humility and emotional introspection that it completely surpasses the hideously mundane insinuation that we’re due another droll rock-star biopic

Jurassic World Rebirth

Drenched in ho-hum reviews and a tepid marketing campaign, it’s worth knowing Jurassic World Rebirth is a distinctly old-fashioned slice of 90s action-adventure pie, the kind of re-watchable cinema that would be completely at home on a video store shelf next to Anaconda (1997) and Congo (1996)

28 Years Later

23 years after establishing that zombies could not only shuffle but sprint at high speed, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland return to reestablish their horror credentials by leaving behind the transitional shock of seeing normality destroyed and instead embracing the cold, wet, post-apocalyptic bleakness of British weather and flesh-hungry beasts.

The Red Shoes (1948) review

It's a movie that peaks behind the curtain into the domain of a world renowned ballet company, Ballet Lermontov. Fiction of course, which is just as well as it allows its audience to escape into a world of beauty, art and heartache.

Real Movies Fake History is a podcast about the true stories behind diverse and important cinema. Hosts Gari and Mel take a critical eye to the history they represent. You'll hear a lot about gender roles, equality, diversity, historical accuracy, and some comedy for good measure.

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