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This week, Ben and Danny reflect on Alejandro González Iñárritu's incredibly divisive satire Digger. Alongside discussing the almost devilish glee that reviewers and industry commentators have displayed when discussing the film's struggle to recoup studio investment, they dive into his previous work whilst discussing 'big swing' films - works that aim to crystallise the problems facing our society and often struggle to find critical and audience appeal as a result.
Ben and Danny wade into the split-diopter-infested world of Brian De Palma - exploring his thematic kinks, his love of Hitchcock, and the operatic brilliance that has produced iconic moments across many different genres.
This week, Ben and Danny belatedly discuss 'Pressure' and the War-Room drama. They discuss the narrative parallels between them and the music biopic, and how the lives of pivotal background figures are remoulded to suit such drab, inoffensive narrative structures.
This week sees Ben and Danny discuss Resident Evil. Alongside the expected musings about video game adaptations and Zack Cregger, they also speculate that his rejection of a broader mythology may signal a shift away from cinematic universes.
After a short hiatus, Ben and Danny return to discuss Sex and Teenage Death at Cam Miasma and Jane Schoenbrun. They discuss how their work explores the simultaneous joy and peril that comes with readily immersing yourself in culture. They also discuss their reverence for the slasher and their career-long thesis on viewing potentially troubling films through a contemporary lens.
This week sees Ben and Danny discuss The End of Oak Street and the films of director David Robert Mitchell. After some initial confusion regarding Mitchell's transition to Blockbuster filmmaking, they identify key themes in his early filmography and how, even with a bigger budget, he (just about) manages to craft something meaningful.
This week sees Ben and Danny take advantage of the Odyssey's box office domination and return to the 'Director Deep Dive', kicking off the resurrection with 'Bloody Sam' Peckinpah. They rattle through the majority of his filmography chronologically, discussing key themes in each and how his characters are anachronistic archetypes weathering the storm of societal change. They also explore the mythology around Peckinpah himself and how this leads to an unfair assessment of his work.
This week, Ben and Danny tackle Nolan's cinematic behemoth, The Odyssey. They also revisit Nolan's filmography and reevaluate his position as one of mainstream cinema's most revered directors.
This week sees a shadow-drenched Ben and Danny (we will be back in the usual space next week!) discuss the unreentingly gnarly Evil Dead Burn. This precedes a discussion on the Evil Dead films of the past and more recent present, the challenges that come with maintaining and changing a franchise in a different time, and New French Extremity Cinema - a subgenre whose nastiness has found its way into the latest deadite-fueled assault on the human form.
This week, Ben and Danny revisit action cinema to discuss the ideological and market imperatives that sculpt Eastern and Western narratives - and how the resulting violence finds justification in ever-familiar tropes. They also review The Furious and where it sits in the contemporary East Asian action canon.
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