Filmsuck

New Filmsuck episode! We're celebrating Scottish-born actor Deborah Kerr ("...rhymes with star!") whose stardom in 1940s England got her a Hollywood studio contract and a "ladylike" star image she had to fight in order to get better roles. She ought to be better known for her unusual air of compassion and worldly wisdom and her many great performances in such films as THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP, BLACK NARCISSUS, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, TEA AND SYMPATHY, HEAVEN KNOWS MR. ALLISON, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, THE KING AND I, BONJOUR TRISTESSE, SEPARATE TABLES, and THE INNOCENTS.

Filmsuck co-hosts agree that this funny low-budget film by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, which is the first film of their "lesbian B-movie trilogy," represents a challenge to our dull American film era. 

Co-hosts grapple with the new Barbra Streisand memoir, a 900+ page tome called MY NAME IS BARBRA that came out in November 2023 but takes three months to read. Latest Filmsuck! Co-host Dolores, a devoted fan of the EGOT award-winning singer-actor-producter-director, brings impressive insight to the way Streisand "needs a hostile world" in order to thrive creatively. The memoir's fascinating early chapters charting Streisand's youthful rise to fame bear this out, as she overcame harsh prejudices against her offbeat looks and personality and working-class Brooklyn Jewish roots to produce sensational performances in nightclubs, and on Broadway, and in films and recording studios.

We're wading into the Oscar nominations and the people who hate them!

In this episode, we talk about the sad mess that is the biopic genre, with MAESTRO, currently playing on Netflix, as one of our main examples. Dolores takes a reasonable stance on the biopic, praising the good ones and indicating the fascination of the form for a certain type of audience, and Eileen says, "Kill it with fire!"

Filmsuck co-hosts round out 2023 and blaze into 2024 with an epic hashing-out of the flamboyantly gorgeous new Yorgos Lanthimos film POOR THINGS that reunites him with his creative team from THE FAVORITE (2018), screenwriter Tony McNamara and lead actor-producer Emma Stone. Stone plays a kind of female Frankenstein's monster created in a laboratory by a reclusive "mad scientist" played by William Dafoe. In this outre feminist fairy tale, she soon escapes to the Continent with a hedonistic lawyer (Mark Ruffalo), and in the process of exploration and self-education escapes the control of the men in her life.

Co-hosts agree that Todd Haynes gripping new melodrama MAY DECEMBER is one of his best! The film has been nominated for several Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature, Best Director for Haynes, Best First Screenplay for Samy Burch, and Best Lead Actor for Natalie Portman. (But not Julianne Moore or Charles Melton? WTF?)

Filmsuck co-hosts hash out the agonizingly compelling cringe-comedy series THE CURSE--created by Nathan Fielder and Bennie Safdie, who also star alongside Emma Stone--and arrive at amazing insights explaining all of contemporary life. This podcast is such a bargain!

New Filmsuck episode! A Halloween celebration of Boris Karloff in two of his pre-Code films: THE OLD DARK HOUSE and THE BLACK CAT! He's best known for FRANKENSTEIN, but Karloff gave so many great performances, it's a good time to appreciate his range. Many of his films are widely available, but these two more obscure ones are part of the current Criterion Channel "Per-Code Horror" series.

Filmsuck co-hosts revel in a raucous low-budget comedy called Bottoms that's playing at a theater near you, and doing amazingly well with critics and young audiences. It's about a high school girls-only fight club--excuse me, "women's self-defense class"--and it's so refreshingly funny and irreverent about the tired cliches of the high school comedy genre, today's toothless feminism, America's cratering educational system, and a lot of other contemporary pieties, we recommend it highly. 

Latest Filmsuck! Our "Old Broads Hit the Road" episode features a discussion of a promising film/TV trend involving older women on the move seeking liberatory experiences in ELLE S'EN VA (ON MY WAY, 2013), JUANITA (2019), HACKS (2021-), and MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS (2021).

Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that the relentless affect and unusual staying power of the FX/Hulu series The Bear makes it a rare example of popular art in the tradition of the family-torment plays of Eugene O'Neill and Edward Albee. A belated tribute!

Latest Filmsuck! Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree on finding Greta Gerwig's BARBIE surprisingly funny and delightful, and Christopher Nolan's OPPENHEIMER a ponderous, unenlightening snore. In order to argue these contentious views, we have to get into the gritty details, so this is a spoilers-galore episode!   

Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores fearlessly defy obsessive Wes Anderson fans in reviling his soul-deadening, seersucker suit sensibility!

In this year's Filmsuck Pride Month episode, we're talking about the fresh and funny HBO series Somebody Somewhere. It's just wrapped up its second season and been renewed for a third, so if you haven't been watching it, now is a good time to catch up with this offbeat show that fans have been raving about and wondering why it doesn't get more attention. It's about a forty-something ex-bartender named Sam Miller (played by audacious actor-singer-comedian Bridget Everett) who's moved back to her small hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, to deal with a family emergency. She struggles to find a way to fit in again with her fractious family and the conservative locals, getting a lot of help from her new friend Joel (Jeff Hiller), a delightful churchgoing gay man who was actually a fellow Show Choir member with her back in high school. He's wired into surprisingly vibrant LGBTQ scene in the Midwestern flatlands where Sam finds the misfit community that welcomes her in.

Filmsuck co-hosts talk about two new documentaries that deal with two wildly different celebrities, each negotiating a lifetime of public performances beginning in childhood--Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields on Hulu, and Little Richard: I Am Everything, available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+. Rejected by his father, a minister who also operated a bar and sold bootleg whiskey on the side, the blazingly talented and sexually fluid Little Richard left home early and soon combined the influences of gospel singers, raucous blues performers, and drag show sensations to become a rock 'n' roll pioneer of the 1950s. Adored and promoted by her possessive and increasingly alcoholic mother, Brooke Shields became a ubiquitous child model in the 1970s and the center of early scandals about the sexual exploitation of underage girls in photography and film. Her own acting goals were swamped by the overwhelming attention paid to her beauty as she became one of the representative celebrities of the 1980s. Both documentaries seek to retell the stories of these well-known figures in order to assert their lasting cultural significance beyond the limited time periods of their greatest fame, with Little Richard as, obviously, a hugely important and influential figure in the history of modern music, and Brooke Shields as the hardy survivor of a pre-"Me Too" era in the modeling and acting professions, which are still highly precarious and even dangerous to girls and women.  

Latest Filmsuck episode! Co-hosts Dolores and Eileen tackle the new Amazon Prime miniseries DEAD RINGERS, based on the 1988 David Cronenberg body-horror freakout classic, and featuring Rachel Weisz in the roles of disturbingly codependent twin gynecologists once played by Jeremy Irons. The miniseries oddly combines feminist topicality with the old good-vs.-evil-twin tropes of melodramas that used to star Bette Davis (A Stolen Life, Dead Ringers) and Olivia De Havilland (Dark Mirror). 

Latest Filmsuck episode! A tribute to Poker Face, the hit Peacock series created by writer-director Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion) with a starring role tailor-made for the marvelous Natasha Lyonne. She plays Charlie Cale, Las Vegas cocktail waitress turned amateur sleuth with a special gift for detecting when people are lying, which is a lot of the time. But it's the lies about murder that obsess Charlie, a character inspired by the classic "howdunnit" mystery-of-the-week show Columbo, anchored by Peter Falk's memorable performance. Both co-hosts love Poker Face, but their discussion focuses particularly on co-host Dolores' appreciation of the show's great fantasy--the eternal road trip across America, and returning to an analog world. 

Filmsuck co-hosts disagree over the new Emily Bronte biopic, Emily, currently playing in theaters. Dolores likes the way the film depicts the creative development of the author of the towering Gothic novel Wuthering Heights, and Eileen--a Bronte Sisters devotee--hates it so much she's willing to see the world burn if only this film could be destroyed. Well, tastes differ.

Since the recording of co-host Eileen's interview with Joel Coen and Frances McDormand about The Tragedy of Macbeth is not going to be widely released after all--a decision made by Coen himself in accordance with the curating team at the Pacific Film Archive where the screening and interview took place--here's a fulsome discussion of the event with co-host Dolores, who was in attendance that evening! Aspects of the entire "Joel Coen in Person" film series, which took place over two exhilarating weekends in late January, are thrashed through for your listening pleasure!

The new Netflix film The Pale Blue Eye, featuring Harry Melling as Edgar Allan Poe when he was an eccentric young West Point cadet, here aiding an alcoholic detective (Christian Bale) to solve the grisly murder of a fellow cadet at the military academy. The film's a train-wreck, and a good opportunity for co-hosts Eileen and Dolores to rant about the strange dearth of Poe biopics and adaptations of his work, considering he was a master of horror and the detective-centered mystery, both thriving genres right now. WTF, entertainment industry?

BONUS Filmsuck episode for holidays! Dolores and Eileen discuss the Christmas movies they can't or won't see because childhood trauma, and offer up some alternative holiday films for your viewing pleasure. Dolores suggests Goodfellas as heartwarming family fare, and Eileen recommends Curse of the Cat People a a lovely yuletide entertainment.

Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores grapple with their bewildering lack of love for White Lotus, the highly praised, much-Emmy-ed HBO Max series satirizing the vacationing ruling class. Sorry in advance to all those who revere it!

Filmsuck co-hosts enthuse about the new Martin McDonagh film The Banshees of Inisherin, a dark comedy that turns pitch-black by the end! Set in 1923 Ireland as the civil war rages on the mainland, this fable-like tale reunites Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, the stars of McDonagh's 2009 cult favorite In Bruges, as former friends whose increasingly bitter estrangement creates severe consequences for the tiny island community of Inisherin. And that includes the animals--lotta animals involved!

For your Halloween pleasure and edification, this week on Filmsuck we're talking about the vampire film from Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1931), and Vampyr (1932) through Martin (1976), The Hunger (1983), Near Dark (1987), Let the Right One In (2008), and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), in order to analyze how this popular movie monster represents such an array of human fears and desires, it can adapt easily to different eras and cultures.

Both Filmsuck co-hosts hated the new George Miller movie Three Thousand Years of Longing, a feeling shared by audiences everywhere, it seems, as the romantic fantasy wastes the talents of Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba in the lead roles and becomes one of the biggest box-office failures of 2022. The film raises the question "Why can't mainstream filmmakers do emotionally powerful movies about love anymore?" as well as "How can a movie with such a shocking 'Magical Negro' storyline have been blandly accepted by so many critics who gave the film glowing reviews?"

This week on Filmsuck we're lamenting the shiny, busy, but oddly inert action comedy Bullet Train that mostly wastes the talents of an excellent cast. Bullet Train stars Brad Pitt as a sweet-natured assassin who's back at work after an extended interlude in therapy, and wants to do a nice, simple, non-violent "snatch and grab" job in keeping with his newfound peace of mind. Unfortunately, he's on a high-speed train from Tokyo to Kyoto with several other stone-cold killers who are either after the same silver briefcase or some sort of gory revenge. 

Though if you talk to your friends and acquaintances you're likely hear a range of opinions on Nope--from 1) best Jordan Peele film so far, he's transcended himself, to 2) worst Jordan Peele film ever, Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) were so much better--your Filmsuck co-hosts agree on their pro-Nope stance. Dolores thoroughly enjoyed it, and Eileen thinks it's one of the most brilliant and thrilling genre films made in ages.   So calling all cinephiles, you need to get in on this public debate while it's hot!  See the film, listen to the episode, argue with your people! 

You may know writer-director-producer Baz Luhrmann from such expensive spectacles as The Great Gatsby, Australia, and Moulin Rouge! Co-hosts Dolores and Eileen talk about Luhrmann's hysterically melodramatic films and disagree sharply on how successfully his new biopic Elvis represents the life and career of legendary performer Elvis Presley, debating in particular how the film stands on the entrenched "Elvis authenticity thesis." (Short version of theory: young "real" pioneering rocker Elvis = good, and older "fake" Las Vegas Elvis = bad.) 

In honor of Pride Month we're talking about the Emmy/Peabody/Golden Globe-winning HBO series Hacks, starring Jean Smart as seventy-ish stand-up comedy legend Deborah Vance, pushed into updating her act by hiring young Gen Z writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, daughter of former SNL star Laraine Newman), whose career is also in trouble. It's hate at first sight until they begin to bond over their unexpected similarities: tremendous career ambition, troubled relationships with family and romantic interests, and struggles as women in the entertainment industry still dominated by men who never seem to age out of their positions of control. And it soon becomes pretty clear that, as co-host Dolores puts it, "The whole show is queer, and not just because Ava is pretty gay for Deborah."

This week we're discussing the new Viking epic The Northman in the context of writer-director Robert Eggers' brief but spectacular career, including his first two feature films, The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019). Deserving of the term "auteur" if anyone is, Eggers admits he had to deal with more creative interference than ever before with big-budget film The Northman, his attempt to widen his audience appeal by making the "most entertaining Robert Eggers film" he could manage. What affect has an attempt to go mainstream had on Eggers' idiosyncratic filmmaking?

In this Filmsuck episode we're talking about witches in film, a favorite subject of ours. We're focusing specifically on the revived figure of the truly frightening witch that is central to Robert Eggers' The Witch (2015) as well as the directorial debut of Goran Stolevski, You Won't Be Alone, which is currently playing in theaters.  These brilliant witch films are part of the "folk horror revival" of the past decade. Join us as we explore that cinematic context as well, covered in detail in the 2021 documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror. 

This week we're tackling another 2022 Academy Award nominee, Pedro Almodovar's Parallel Mothers. It's not nominated for Best Picture or even Best International Feature Film, which is weird--what the hell, Academy? But Penelope Cruz is nominated for Best Actress in her seventh film with the director, and longtime Almodovar collaborator Alberto Inglesias is nominated for Best Original Score. This is a more overtly political film than most in Almodovar's oeuvre, with a narrative concerning the Spanish Civil War and the lingering agony over those who were murdered by fascists. It's also a vivid film melodrama, with a wild central point of tension--were the two mothers' babies switched shortly after birth?

We're very keen on this audacious adaptation of Macbeth by Joel Coen, his first solo effort without brother Ethan. This might seem like an odd choice of project, but Coen stresses the link between Macbeth and earlier Coen "pulp noir" films. He also acknowledges his brilliant predecessors in making expressionistic black-and-white versions of Macbeth, saying in interviews that, while Akira Kurosawa's 1957 Throne of Blood is probably the greatest film adaptation, Orson Welles' 1948 Macbeth is the most emboldening: "That's a wacky movie. Welles had no problem rearranging, cutting, and inventing with Shakespeare. It was kind of liberating. You look at that and go, well, all right, he's doing it."

In this final episode of our "Favorite Film Genres" series, we take on what is perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most subversive, American film genre, film noir! We analyze the old and new versions of Nightmare Alley to help us define the dark, doom-obsessed, complex noir form: Guillermo del Toro's fantastical sin-soaked version currently playing in theaters, and the seemingly plainer but ultimately more searing and socially critical cult classic 1947 film noir. [WARNING: WE DO ALLLLL THE SPOILERS!]

In this week's Filmsuck episode, our co-hosts throw down over which version of the great musical West Side Story reigns supreme. Eileen backs the 1961 version directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, while Dolores pulls for Steven Spielberg's new version. That being said, co-hosts join forces to shake their fists at such Spielberg choices as overly CGIed and desaturated cinematography and some of the more egregious “social issue” scenes, like the lengthy one devoted to the purchase of a gun in order to point up the dangers of gun violence in a work that's already taking on gang mayhem, racism, class hatred, abusive and corrupt policing…   Though Spielberg avoids the worst sin of the musical form, plugging in a random non-musically-gifted star and expecting them to pretend that they're pulling off the singing and dancing you (don't) see onscreen. Spielberg went for relatively unknown leads to at least secure good singers and dancers. We hope you enjoy the latest installment of our “Favorite Film Genres” series with this wild series of rants on the musical!   

Todd Haynes is co-host Dolores McElroy's “favorite living director” for his films' “meticulousness” and “visual splendor,” but above all the way he loves his subjects and makes them “vibrant and romantic”! Dressed for life at the front of a classroom, Haynes always projects the air of a nice, well-adjusted teacher--and indeed, he figured he'd wind up as a teacher who made experimental films on the side. But he made a splash in the late 1980s film world with his surprisingly moving film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, done in stop-motion animation using Barbie dolls as his cast, quickly became a leading light of the New Queen Cinema movement with his film Poison under conservative right-wing attack, and he's been with us as a fascinating filmmaker ever since, with films as varied in content and approach as Safe, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There, Mildred Pierce, Carol, Wonderstruck, Dark Waters, and the new documentary The Velvet Underground.      [MIND THE GAP: We got so embroiled in talking about Haynes, we talked right through a gap in the sound around the ten-minute mark. Just keep on listening, we come back strong!]  

We know we've sung high praises for all our Great Old Broads, but wow, was Liza Minnelli an amazing talent! In our final installment of the series, we discuss this multi-media star, tailor-made for the New Hollywood of the 1960s. Even though she had famous Hollywood movie studio parents, Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Liza initially propelled herself toward life as a dancer and actor on stage. She had such early success, she won a Tony Award at age nineteen in her first leading role on Broadway, and the film industry quickly came calling. Ultimately becoming a star of all media--stage, screen, concerts, television--Minnelli gave her all in every performance, to the point that co-host Eileen notes that it's exhausting just watching her sing-dance-act and do encore after encore. We talk about Minnelli's extravagance and skill, her wild showbiz personal life, her admirable code of ethics, her relationship with her famous parents, and her investment in the glittering future. Minnelli poured every last ounce of herself into her performances, and we hope we returned the gesture this week on Filmsuck!

So much Liz that we needed two episodes to deal with all that stardom. Here we cover everything from the Liz-starring film epic Cleopatra that bankrupted 20th Century-Fox to near-death from pneumonia and an emergency tracheotomy to the scandalous Liz-and-Dick romance that included two marriages to Richard Burton plus one rebuke from the Pope to her Oscar-winning performance at age thirty-four as middle-aged harridan Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic to groundbreaking AIDS activism... And a whole lot more besides! 

Here's our very special Filmsuck episode featuring author and film columnist Jessa Crispin, who joins us in a gleeful, long-overdue takedown of Sofia Coppola films! 

In the latest Filmsuck episode, we're talking scary-beautiful sorceress-star Vivien Leigh who played Scarlett O'Hara and Cleopatra and Anna Karenina and Blanch DuBois and many other iconic film roles. We also take on the recent, remarkably stupid film studies scholarship about her. 

We're kicking off our "Great Old Broads" series with the fabulously overdressed silent screen star Gloria Swanson, who set out to become a definitive figure of excess in the highly excessive Hollywood of the 1910s and 1920s. You know her as Norma Desmond, the unforgettably mad has-been star determined on making a comeback ("I hate that word! It's 'return'!") in the great 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. Though she played the part so magnificently, even people who knew her personally became convinced Gloria must be Norma in real life, Swanson actually stayed very sane and very busy for decades after the Talkies revolutionized the film industry, working steadily in film, television, radio, and theater. But Gloria agreed with Norma in one major way--a star ought to look like a star!

In this Filmsuck Summer Film Series (FSFS) episode we're focusing on horror films set in vacation settings. We discuss the beachy shock effects of Jaws and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and especially concentrate on the lakeside summer camp slasher terrors of Friday the 13th. Our special guest Ian Miller joins us to discuss the original Friday the 13th (1980), which was written by his father, screenwriter Victor Miller, whom Ian admits suffered from "Mommy issues." Hence his resentment of sequels featuring Jason as the iconic killer, when Jason's mother was meant to be the REAL killer.

We're kicking off our Filmsuck Summer Film Series (FSFS for short) with a tribute to films and TV about teen girls making the most of their magical interlude of freedom. We're also sharing some partially hidden gems that you might not know about: 2018 indie film Skate Kitchen and its current HBO series spin-off Betty, both directed by Crystal Moselle, about the NYC adventures of a real-life female crew of skateboarders, and the 2019 directorial debut of Oliva Wilde, Booksmart, a hilarious comedy about two high-achieving nerd-girls who spent their high school years studying and decide, on the eve of graduation, to have all their teenage fun in one epic night.

This week we're taking on the Ryan Murphy Problem by examining the new five-episode Netflix series Halston, produced and co-written by Murphy. It stars Ewan McGregor as the famous one-name fashion designer whose spectacular rise backed by huge corporate money made him a king of NYC in the Studio 54 era, and whose equally spectacular fall in a cloud of cocaine powder stripped him of nearly everything, including the Halston name. It's great material. So the question is, how does Murphy manage to screw it up?

In this episode of Filmsuck we justify our love for Tallulah Bankhead, the sensational star of stage, screen, radio, and television whose outrageous wit, frank enjoyment of recreational drugs and alcohol, and wild sexual adventuring made her as famous as her acting from the 1920s to the 1960s. She used to tell reporters, "Say anything about me, dahling, as long as it isn't boring," and we do our damnedest to honor her request.

Happy 110th birthday, TW! In this episode of Filmsuck we're reveling in the mind-blowing film adaptations of Tennessee Williams' great plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Night of the Iguana (1964). The most celebrated American playwright of the mid-20th century, Williams' riveting explorations of tormented sexuality, lacerating family trauma, the sick cruelty of the dominant culture, the desperation of the marginalized, and the "devouring" face of God make for a surreal and unforgettable cinema of excess.

This is, in a way, a continuation of last week’s special Anti-Valentine’s Day episode about “peak libido” and unsexy cinema and television, because we’re talking about the supposed counter-example of Bridgerton, which is getting raves for its red-hot period-piece sexiness. Special guest co-host Emily Robbins helps Eileen fathom the Regency romance subgenre in order to understand the phenomenon that is Bridgerton, which is such a huge hit on Netflix, it’s kind of…bizarre.

Today in honor of this awful holiday we're doing an anti-Valentine's Day episode, lamenting the dreary unsexiness of most film and television of our time. We're wondering if it's part of a much larger phenomenon--the depletion of erotic energy in our collective existence that's running alongside the depletion of other planetary resources. That's the topic of the book we're discussing entitled Peak Libido: Sex, Ecology, and the Collapse of Desire by our very special guest, Dominic Pettman, university professor of Media and New Humanities at The New School for Social Research.

In the latest Filmsuck episode we take on the depressingly timely topic of fascist aesthetics, in terms of historical development and cinematic representations. For example, did you know that the success of the notorious white supremacist film Birth of a Nation (1915) inspired both a resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan but also their adoption of the full white-hood-and-robe uniform featured in the film? And that before that point, KKK members had dressed in motley carnivalesque costumes more similar to the Q Anon rioter outfits worn to storm the capitol building on January 6th? Some other questions we consider include: why are the Nazis, whose professed ideology was arguably anti-art, anti-intellectual thuggery, frequently portrayed as highly cultured dandies in movies? And--if we consider the dapper Nazi villains of Hollywood as part of a fascist continuum with the Germanic tribe cosplay of the Q Anon rioters--is there such a thing as a fascist aesthetic?

Dolores and Eileen talk All About Fran--i.e. writer-humorist-raconteur-ultimate New Yorker Fran Lebowitz--in the new Martin Scorsese docuseries Pretend It's a City, now playing on Netflix. We celebrate Fran L., "public wit," mordant naysayer, and the last bohemian standing, representing a lost gritty urban paradise of art, books, music, and hanging out smoking, drinking, and eating with fellow creative types.