This week on Late Fee Files, Adam and Brian start with the early-2000s comedy about three professional students who’ve mastered the art of doing absolutely nothing and somehow getting away with it. We break down the film’s shameless slacker philosophy, its cartoonishly intense antagonist, and why it could never be made today. It’s a movie that could only exist in a moment when disappearing into college for years was not just possible, but encouraged.

Then we rewind further to PCU (1994), the cult classic that somehow predicted the future while being completely unhinged. From Jeremy Piven’s chaotic anti-establishment energy to nonstop protests, splintered campus factions, and a soundtrack that feels like a dorm room on full blast, PCU skewers conformity from every direction. We unpack how the movie treats outrage, identity, and why its reputation has grown as modern campus discourse starts to look eerily familiar. Two films, two eras, one overdue rental. Late fees absolutely apply.

On this episode of Late Fee Files, we jack into the mid-’90s internet panic with a double feature that helped define Hollywood’s idea of hacking: The Net and Hackers. Two films released just a few weeks apart, both obsessed with dial-up modems and cyber paranoia.

We start with The Net, a sleek, paranoid thriller that turns everyday computer use into a nightmare. Sandra Bullock plays an ordinary woman whose identity is quietly erased, tapping into very real anxieties about privacy, surveillance, and how fragile modern life can be when everything is stored digitally.

Then we shift gears into Hackers, a loud, neon-soaked fantasy of youth culture, rebellion, and cyber cool. With rollerblades, rave aesthetics, and a cast of future stars, the film treats hacking like a subculture and a lifestyle rather than a quiet menace.

It's time for identity theft, cyberpunk attitude, and more close-ups of keyboards than you remember. Grab a Jolt Cola, rewind your tape, and log off before someone steals your name.

On this episode of Late Fee Files, we crack open one of the strangest double features imaginable, two late 90s studio films that couldn’t look more different on the surface but quietly reflect the same era of shifting identities, relationships, and urban fantasy.

Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut takes us on a chilly, dreamlike odyssey through jealousy, desire, and power, using New York as a haunting maze where intimacy feels distant and unknowable. We dig into the film’s hypnotic pacing, its infamous secrecy, and why its emotional coldness continues to divide audiences decades later.

Then we pivot to You’ve Got Mail, a glossy romantic comedy that transforms the same city into a cozy storybook of bookstores, emails, and pre-digital connection. We explore Nora Ephron’s warm, meticulously structured comfort cinema, the chemistry between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and how the film captures a very specific moment when technology still felt hopeful rather than alienating.

Together, these films offer two visions of romance at the turn of the millennium, one defined by paranoia and erotic anxiety, the other by charm and carefully curated optimism. It’s a study in tonal whiplash, late-90s cultural mood, and identity.