Afleveringen
-
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores praise the complex and ultimately harrowing Susannah Herbert documentary NATCHEZ, currently streaming on YouTube and Apple TV+ and soon to arrive at PBS. It focuses on the engine driving this Mississippi River port town's economy, which is tourismâspecifically the guided tours through plantation houses that have, for nearly a hundred years, "stuck to the script" of the romantic fantasy of the gracious Old South. However, new tour guides and local activists, several of them Black locals, have emerged recently who insist on factually accurate tours that include the history of slavery and the people held in bondage who actually built those plantation houses and kept them running. In exploring the tensions around this issue in Natchez, a town of complex demographics that is considered a politically progressive "blue dot in a sea of red," Herbert gets representative citizens to talk more and more freelyâand sometimes appallinglyâabout what they really think of their fraught history and current experience.
-
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores express their admiration and affection for comedian Chris Fleming and his hilarious new HBO special CHRIS FLEMING: LIVE AT THE PALACE. Highly recommended!
You may know Fleming from his dazzling comic flights on YouTube and Instagram, but as Fleming puts it, this special is designed to expand his audience beyond "women who brought a knife to prom." Wearing a four-way-stretch purple jumpsuit made by Prince's longtime costume designer Anthony Sartino, Fleming is able to prance, race, strut, flap, tumble, and moonwalk freely around the stage characterizing the freaky eccentrics and wanna-be-freaky normies who populate our world. He's pinpointed unerringly by the theater's spotlight operator who was "on the team that got Osama." Acknowledging his own unique appearance and category-busting affect that revives the old dream of queer liberation, Fleming says there's already been "a nationwide manhunt for my pronouns" and he/she/they will answer to any of them, leaving it up to the audience: "You tell me. You're looking at it."
-
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
-
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores resisted seeing HAMNET, so they both marvel at the emotional impact it achieves by the poignant ending, when almost everyone in theater audiences dissolves into tears. HAMNET is a period tragedy by Chloe Zhao (NOMADLAND) thatâs been playing in arthouse theaters for two months. Itâs still drawing crowds, and itâs nominated for a number of Academy Awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (by Zhao and the author of the source novel by Maggie OâFarrell), and Best Actress (Jessie Buckley). It deals with the relationship of husband and wife William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Agnes Hathaway (Buckley), which is tested by the death of their eleven-year-old son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). The filmâs seemingly grandiose theme is the way art can transform experiences such as grief over the loss of a loved one into a sense of meaning in terms of human life in the universe. But donât scoff. Youâre probably more susceptible to this idea than you think you are. Just wait till you cry through the final sequence.
-
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that the title character in writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaalâs THE BRIDE!, played by Jessie Buckley (who also portrays the wry, raddled spirit of author Mary Shelley) is terrific. She has a brilliantly disheveled look of undead glamor featuring wild bleached-blonde hair, wonderfully garish orange dress, black lips, and the inky splotch that spews up from the corner of her mouth, a chemical stain left over from the process of reanimation. Dolores is forgiving of the way THE BRIDE!, especially in its addled second half, fails to live up to central character and best scenes, whereas Eileen canât condemn Gyllenhaal hard enough for the dopey, unfocused, pretentious way she blows her opportunity to make an electrifying film.
-
Co-hosts disagree on THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, a new film about the title character (played by Amanda Seyfried) who founded the Shaker religion. Eileen liked it because she has a morbid religious streak that makes her obsessively interested in movies about old-time people who see visions and start mad spiritual communities. Dolores, on the other hand, hates movies set in the 18th century âwhen everything was so ILLâ and found THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE a dull empty frustrating would-be-hipster work that makes the artfully simple utilitarian structures of Shaker architecture look like Restoration Hardware stores. A lively debate ensues!
-
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores found Jim Jarmuschâs new indie film Father Mother Sister Brother a sleep-inducing slog. Itâs a comedy-drama anthology film in three chapters about difficult family relationships that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and stars Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling. Jarmusch calls it an âanti-action filmâ that avoids commercial expectations of such typically hard-hitting effects as âdrama, violence, revenge, sexâ in order to create a film thatâs minimalist, focused, delicate, and deliberately simple, like âthree flower arrangements.â So consider yourself warned!
-
In honor of the season, co-hosts Eileen and Dolores take on the made-for-TV holiday movie, focusing especially on the perennial Hallmark Channel favorite, A SHOE ADDICTâS CHRISTMAS (2018). Itâs about a thirtysomething department store employee and shoe-lover named Noelle (Candace Cameron Bure) whoâs lost both her creative and romantic mojo, which leads her guardian angel Charlie (Jean Smart) to use her Ghost of Christmas Past and Future powers in showing Noelle how to find a man and a plan. Naturally several Christmas miracles ensue. Eileen, a Hallmark Channel newbie, is appalled by these eye-hurting spectacles while Dolores points out how to read against the grain and discover the socially critical women-centered melodramas that survive in surreal forms in these ultra-popular movies.
-
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores disagree when it comes to their basic reactions to the new FRANKENSTEIN, written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro and currently playing on Netflix. Whereas Dolores finds a number of aspects of the film compelling, such the opulent production design, the sensitive performances of Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth, and the all-out melodramatic emotionalism typical of Del Toro, Eileen experienced such a blinding hatred of the whole thing she could only gradually realize thatâŠyes, Mia Goth is always interesting.
-
Co-host Eileen Jones and special guest Conan Neutron of the Movie Night Extravaganza podcast enthuse about the wild and riveting new Yorgos Lanthimos film, Bugonia. It concerns a pair of rural cousins, played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis, who abduct the CEO of a pharmaceutical company (Emma Stone), convinced sheâs an alien come to destroy planet Earth through corporate means. Their plan is to force her to arrange a meeting between the cousins and the âAndromedansâ on their mother ship in order to negotiate an agreement for the aliens to leave Earth in peace. Which is a fairly reasonable account of whatâs happening on Earth recently, compared to some of the explanations we hear.
-
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that Paul Thomas Andersonâs ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is a must-see movie and a model for American filmmaking right now. An adaptation of Thomas Pynchonâs 1990 novel VINELAND, ONE BATTLE makes brilliant use of such dynamic genres as action, dark comedy, and the political thriller to drive this depiction of an aging radical leftist in hiding, hilariously played by Leonardo DiCarprio, whoâs trying to protect his teenage daughter from his past. Then theyâre targeted by rightwing political forces led by the repulsive Col. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) and compelled to go on the run. Donât miss it!
-
New Filmsuck episode! Dolores and I enthuse about CAUGHT STEALING. It's doing pretty badly at the box-office, though it's a timely dark comic noir of chaotic working class life, and Austin Butler has a delightful co-star in the cat actor playing Bud.
-
Special guest Asali Echols, documentary filmmaker, talks to me about the current state of documentary films. We discuss a recent trend toward reviving the strict "observational documentary," led by filmmakers like Elizabeth Lo, whose breakthrough film was the dog's-eye-view movie STRAY (2020). Her upcoming new doc MISTRESS DISPELLER, about a "love industry" in China involving wives hiring undercover operatives to break up the relationships of husbands and their mistresses, tests the limits of Lo's "observational not interventionist" documentary filmmaking ethics. https://www.patreon.com/posts/straying-into-136099786
-
New Filmsuck episode! While Dolores is making the world safe for opera in Santa Fe, I'm talking to my friend M Dalebout, whose area of scholarly expertise is identity construction in onscreen comedy. We start off with the 2025 HBO Max documentary PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF!
-
New Filmsuck episode! I rage against Lena Dunham, who cursed us all with GIRLS and is back doing further harm to impressionable minds everywhere with her new, semi-autobiographical Netflix romantic comedy TOO MUCH. Dolores has a more measured reaction to this low-stakes entertainment about an arrested development case played by Megan Stalter (HACKS) who tries to get over a bad breakup by relocating from Brooklyn to London and immediately starting a messy relationship with an indie rocker played by Will Sharpe (WHITE LOTUS 3).How high is your Lena Dunham tolerance?
-
Season 4 of Mike White's big hit show WHITE LOTUS might not be the most profound thing you've ever seen, but Dolores and Eileen still enjoy its excellent cast reveling in portraying the latest tales of ghastly behaviors of the rich.
-
Co-hosts Dolores and Eileen enthuse about the messy but compelling thrills of Ryan Coogler's delirious Deep South vampire extravaganza!
-
Action film enthusiasts rejoice! Special guest Forrest "Flacko" Miller of the lively and popular Movie Night Extravaganza podcast joins co-host Eileen Jones for an episode delving into the everybody's-a-killer world of JOHN WICK 1 - 4, including the new riotously violent spin-off BALLERINA starring Ana de Armas. Discussion includes wild speculation about the likely plot for the upcoming JOHN WICK 5, featuring the return of Keanu Reeves as everyone's favorite world-weary assassin.
-
All about that time Dolores interviewed her favorite living director Todd Haynes (SAFE, FAR FROM HEAVEN, I'M NOT THERE, CAROL, MAY DECEMBER)--which was only two weeks ago! Filmsuck co-hosts exult in all things Haynes, including his films, his academic background, his current political take, his unforgettable meeting with Barbra Streisand, his cocktail of choice, his upcoming projects, and much, much more.
-
Late in the narcotizing Oscars 2025 telecast, host Conan O'Brien made the oddly poignant promise that "Through trauma and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here." It was a weird, oblique, it'll-be-okay reference to the seismic upheavals in America, after the whole nearly-four-hour show had made a point of avoiding any reference to them. Notice the absence of any outspoken left-wing celebrities who would've been inclined to rail at the current administration's punitive tear through the government? Mark Ruffalo? Susan Sarandon? Jane Fonda, who just made a barnburner of a speech at the SAG Awards--where were you? Not at the bland and careful Academy Awards ceremony, that's for sure!
-
Talking about I'M STILL HERE, a new political drama based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva about the fracturing of his leftist family in the early 1970s, during the right-wing military dictatorship in Brazil. It's the latest film by Walter Salles (MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, CENTRAL STATION), who knew the Paiva family personally, and it's Brazil's biggest film hit since the Covid pandemic. It's also up for multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best International Film, and Best Actress for the formidable Fernanda Torres. Co-hosts aren't in total agreement about I'M STILL HERE--Eileen loved it while acknowledging Dolores's misgivings about the lack of class-consciousness and its extended structure following what happens to the family in the forty-plus years after the harrowing events of 1971.
- Laat meer zien
