Film Trace

We are back! We are doing something different this season of Film Trace. Instead of covering new and old films at random, we are choosing a theme for each group of episodes. Our first theme is Self-Aware Horror.

First up in our Self-Aware Horror cycle is Scream 5 aka Scream 2022. We are both huge Scream fans, so we felt like we had to do a deep dive on this requel. I hate that term, and we discuss why in this episode. What does it mean to make a love letter film? Are requels progressive or regressive? The Scream series has been surprisingly strong when compared to other horror series, but where can it go on the 5th film, coming out 26 years after the original. The surviving gang is all back with some fresh blood as leads, but it all feels like a theme park version of the original. It looks and sounds the same, but it just feels different, off even.

Also new this season, we are doing a 2nd film at the end of the episode as a chaser. In this episode, we wash down the requel swill with the peppy and perky slasher romp, Happy Death Day (2017).

A Wes Anderson double-header to close out Season 5 of Film Trace. Chris and I return to our roots as teenage film nerds. Wes Anderson was our first love as budding cinephiles, and despite the tumultuous last 20 years (Darjeeling anyone), we still get a jolt of excitement with every new Anderson film. The French Dispatch is Anderson's first portmanteau film, and the results are whimsically mixed as expected. We also cover one of Wes's best films, The Royal Tenenbaums as it hits the 20-year mark. The snowglobe world of Royal has aged incredibly well. It is a rich literary yarn woven of the finest pure cinema fibre, dyed millennial pink of course. 

Joining us for the Season 5 Finale is Harry from the Trylove podcast, an awesome podcast dedicated to the wonderful The Trylon Cinema in Minneapolis. 

At the height of Jim Carrey's fame in the mid 1990s, this bizarre pitch-black comedy was released as a summer blockbuster. The Cable Guy is a historical and creative anomaly, especially for millenials old enough to have seen it in the theater. For the last twenty-five years, we have all been trying to piece together and understand the strange feelings this movie put inside of us. The genre here is a white-out blend of gross-out buddy comedy, media satire, and exrotic thriller. The Cable Guy is truly the ideal film for Film Trace. It is so full of contradictions, oscliating successes and failures, that we can't help but try to make sense of this absurd attempt by the Frat Pack to parody The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. In what world could this possibly make sense besides our own? 

Special Guest: Great podcasters and friends of the show, Brigitte and Mark

As the box office finally begins to be resuscitated, albeit largely with the help of the comic book movie crowd, straight-to-streaming films now seem to either cater to cinematic schlock addicts or art film dorks, and the latest from the IFC Midnight imprint, We Need to Do Something, falls in a strange but intriguing gray area between the two. The first feature narrative from director (and known indie producer) Sean King O'Grady, scripted and based on a novella by up-and-comer Max Booth III, the bottle episode-style story of a dysfunctional family stuck in a bathroom after a mysterious storm is as fun as it is disturbing.

But, as the saying goes, perhaps there were script problems from day one. Whether it be characters that seem to serve no other function than a vehicle for body horror or plot contrivances that distract more than they entertain, how does a small project like this with an uncompromising and borderline disgusting vision (arguably to a fault) wind up available to everyone with a Hulu subscription? And where does it go from here besides the annals of scary movie obscurity?

Let's get bummed. Back in 2006, the USA was deep in the 2nd term of George Bush II, aka the idiot king, and his 2nd Iraq war was raging. As a leftist, it felt like a total nightmare, but Alfonso Cuarón heard our cries. His Children of Men, a bleak dystopian manifesto, landed mostly with a thud when it was carelessly released on Christmas Day in 2006. A stellar cast helmed by Clive Owen and gorgeous cinematography via Emmanuel Lubzeki couldn't save this holiday humbug from financial failure. Accordingly, Children of Men instantly became a cult film among the Letterboxd set. Academics, film nerds, and art house scenesters all raved about the one-shots, the world-building, and the nihilism that mirrored their own. But how has that effuse praise aged after the Great Recession, Trump, and Covid. Has Cuarón's bleak vision been blurred by unstoppable climate change, social anarchy, and the new rise of fascism or has it merely been burned into our collective lens?

Special Guest: Friend of podcast and Hollywood Insider, Ryan, joins us to discuss this sad boy opus.

Is nostalgia poison? It felt nearly impossible to avoid cynicism while watching this new Home Alone film, the 6th film in the series unceremoniously shipped off to Disney Plus. The critical response has been contemptuous. The audience reaction has been mutinous. But we can't help but wonder, how would a movie like this actually succeed with critics and audiences? Corporate reboots and fanboyism are not as diametrically opposed as we have been led to believe. Home Sweet Home Alone is a cash-in, but what film isn't? Most wide-release films are made by billion dollar companies. They are products meant to turn a profit. Yet the bellicose reaction to Home Sweet Home Alone suggests a willful naivete amongst critics and viewers. Fanboys doth protest too much? 

Put on your finest linen sports coat and/or effortless flowy sundress. Pack a handkerchief as well. This week we tackle the moistest noir seared onto film, 1981's Body Heat. We take exotic thrillers for granted now, but before Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, we had Body Heat, a steamy take on the classic noir Double Indemnity. Palm Beach Florida and its fictionalized incessant humidity take center stage alongside William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in a voyeuristic exploration of how our sex and death drives often intermingle. Sparks fly between Hurt and Turner while a motley crew of supporting players, a tap-dancing Ted Danson and frenzied Mickey Rourke, shuffle around a paint-by-numbers plot that nonetheless simmers until finally reaching a boil in the finale.  

Joining us this week is erotic thriller expert and great friend of the show, Molly. 

When Paranormal Activity came out in 2007, old school ads showing actual audience members jumping in their seats in night-vision green theaters gave the whole thing a real gimmick feel. The Blair Witch Project wasn't the first found footage movie ever made, but it was by far the best (still is) when it came out in 1999. Paranormal Activity felt a little johnny-come-lately, but the masses didn't care. They ate it up for years. Jason Blum, the horror maestro, kept greenlighting 5 million budget sequels and getting 100 million back.  Would you stop? So we find ourselves 14 years later with the Paranormal series now at seven films, a little horror version of the MCU.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is not really found footage and it's not really a Paranormal Activity movie, but it does have Amish devil worshipers. It has more in common with Blair Witch (documentary film team explores rural America) than the other PA films. But instead of embracing that gonzo style, it aims more for a polished pov adventure. It feels a little like an old Sega VR game but just in HD. This low art mishmash of genre and technique should not work at all. But one of us thinks there is still some gold in the barren mines of the Paranormal Activity franchise. Listen to find out who is the Gus Chiggins. 

Juno landed like an atom bomb. Diablo Cody's zeitgeist script mixed with the chemistry of Elliot Page and Micheal Cera became a cultural phenomenon in the winter of 2007-8. Millennial hipsters and their boomer parents, along with everyone in between, flocked to see this little slice of plucky Midwestern smarm. Cody's script won an Oscar, and Juno was nominated for Best Picture. 

Diablo Cody was supernova, but this began to fade as her follow-up Jennifer's Body stumbled at the box office in 2009. Here we have her 3rd script and 2nd film with Reitman, 2011's Young Adult starring the motley crew of Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, and Patrick Wilson. The film is almost unclassifiable: black comedy or doomed romance or domestic horror. Cody's dark script with Reitman's lowkey direction creates an uncanny valley between pity and empathy. Young Adult is Diablo Cody's very personal nightmare about what might have been, and we attempt to psychoanalyze her distraught fever dream.