On this week’s Someone Else’s Movie I welcome a colleague and pal, film critic Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail. And here’s here for a book launch!

See, Barry’s spent a truly terrifying amount of his free time writing Welcome to the Family, a book about the evolution and cultural significance of the Fast & Furious franchise, and now that said book is coming out next week I couldn’t pass up the chance to have him on the show.

And what did he want to talk about? Fast Five, of course —  the 2011 chapter that took the series from low-level car stunts to actual spectacle, shunting our antiheroes into a heist plot that culminates in an almost absurdist set piece: It’s the one where they rob a bank by stealing the entire vault. Pure mayhem, and a glorious thing to experience with a crowd — and both the franchise and its fans have chasing that high ever since. I wish I’d thought of that line yesterday when I wrote and recorded the intro.

Anyway! Barry uses Fast Five as a way to put the entire series under the microscope, and it makes for a very fun episode. You should check it out! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or just download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you practice saying “family” in a low growl.

And if you’re in Toronto, think about coming down to the Hot Docs Cinema next Tuesday for Barry’s book launch, or next Friday to see him introduce a screening of the 2001 Point Break knockoff that started it all, Rob Cohen’s The Fast and the Furious. A quarter-century later, can anyone still live their life a quarter-mile at a time? Barry knows the answer.

Also, there are new editions of Shiny Things to read; last week I wrote about the freshly released discs of  The Naked Gun, The Toxic Avenger, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale and Spinal Tap II — though only the first two are really worth your time — and Universal’s 40th anniversary edition of the Back to the Future trilogy, the oft-released property’s best package yet. C’mon, subscribe already! It’s good for the soul!