Double Toasted (Korey Coleman)

Double Toasted is the movie-review empire of Korey Coleman — the Austin, Texas-based critic whose long-form, live, gloriously unfiltered reviews built one of the internet’s most loyal film communities. Its motto might as well be “no sacred cows”: blockbusters, festival darlings, and straight-to-streaming disasters all get the honest treatment.

Coleman, born September 9, 1971, in Waco, started as an animator. In the late 1990s he launched The Reel Deal, an Austin cable-access review show that reunited him with Martin Thomas and brought in Chris Cox, C. Robert Cargill, and Tony Guerrero. When access TV grew stale, he started animating over the crew’s review audio for comical effect — drawing the caricatures that made the reviewers instantly recognizable — and a genre was born.

Those cartoons became Spill.com. After the videos caught the eye of Hollywood.com’s executives, Coleman built the site into the internet’s rowdiest film-review destination, running from 2007 to 2013. When Hollywood.com pulled the plug on December 20, 2013 — the final review, fittingly, was Saving Mr. Banks — the alumni scattered into legend: Cox founded the geek-culture outlet OneOfUs.net; Cargill became a Hollywood screenwriter (Sinister, Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) and published novelist; Guerrero moved into acting, appearing in Alita: Battle Angel.

The fans would not let it end. Pressured by the community, Coleman launched the “New Beginnings” Kickstarter with a $30,000 goal — and closed a 24-hour finale stream at $133,860, more than quadruple the ask. With close friend Tommy McGrew, he built DoubleToasted.com, which launched in July 2014.

The schedule is a full weekly lineup: The Daily Double Talk, The Movie Review Extravaganza (the Wednesday flagship), The Sunday Service, The Casual Call-In Show, The Weekly Roast and Toast, and The High Score for games. Every show is recorded in audio and video, and the flagship’s highlights land on YouTube, where the channel has grown past 311,000 subscribers.

The rating scale is pure Toasted: reviews range from “Better than Sex” for the all-timers down to “F*ck You!” for the insultingly bad. As Coleman told the Daily Texan, it keeps the conversation feeling like friends arguing about movies — because that is exactly what it is.

The crew is the content. Coleman and Thomas remain the core, joined by Korey Goodwin, Patrick Girts, and the extended family — and the chemistry of the live shows is the whole draw. Long, loose, hilarious sessions where the movies are just the excuse and the hang is the point.

The business model is the statement: community-funded, proudly independent, and allergic to the compromises of access journalism. No studio junkets to protect, no advertisers to please, no embargoes to honor. When Coleman hates a movie, you hear it; when he loves one, you feel it. That trust is the entire brand — and the Toasters, famously devoted, keep showing up for marathons, meetups, Austin live shows, and the endless inside jokes.

In an era of embargo-friendly consensus, Double Toasted is a reminder of what criticism is for: telling the truth about movies, entertainingly, consequences be damned. Korey Coleman built the table; the Toasters keep it full.

To understand Double Toasted, you have to understand Spill. In the late 2000s, Coleman’s animated reviews were genuinely pioneering: cartoon caricatures of the reviewers arguing over the week’s releases, scripted skits, a house style nobody else had. The site’s podcasts — especially the League of Extremely Ordinary Gentlemen — built a community so devoted that members traveled to Austin for annual gatherings. It was a true fan culture before fan cultures had a playbook, and when Hollywood.com shut it down, the grief was real.

The reviews themselves became events. The Movie Review Extravaganza is not a ten-minute verdict; it is a long, spoiler-filled, frequently hilarious deep dive where the crew argues like friends at a bar. The legendary rants, the passionate defenses of underrated gems, the eviscerations of the insultingly bad — the scale of the show is the point. In an age of bite-sized takes, Double Toasted reviews like it has all night, because it does.

Austin is part of the identity too. The 2014 launch party, the live shows in local theaters, the marathons — Double Toasted is a Texas operation with a global audience, and the hometown roots show. It is independent media in the oldest sense: a crew, a city, and an audience that pays to keep the lights on. No corporate parent, no algorithm to please — just the crew, the city, and the Toasters.

The verdict, after more than a decade: independence works when the audience trusts you. No access, no ads, no apologies — just the truth about movies, delivered loudly, from Austin, Texas. The Toasters wouldn’t have it any other way.