Filmsuck

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!