Trylove

Featuring special guest Nick Ransbottom!

What other noirs didn't have, THE THIN MAN series did: levity, breathing room, characters who weren't written full of life just to have it snuffed out on the next page. Nick and Nora Charles's charmed life as bourgeois socialites and functioning alcoholics could be an uneasy basis for a hard-boiled plot but for William Powell and Myrna Loy's bedrock performances.

Based on the 1934 Dashiell Hammett novel, THE THIN MAN made the leap from the page to the screen that same year, carrying a lot of literary baggage with it (including a somewhat overwritten script) but still weaving between noir and comedy like a boxer between punches.

Follow us at @trylovepodcast on Twitter and email us at [email protected] to get in touch!

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Featuring Trylon film programmer John Moret!

The Trylon Cinema (née "Microcinema") celebrates its 10th birthday this month with a day-long surprise movie marathon. Trylon film programmer John Moret calls it a rare "ritual space" – perhaps the only one in the Midwest – that celebrates the act of GOING to the movies rather than just SEEING one. For this episode, we were thrilled to welcome John in to chat about the origins of the Trylon, how he chooses movies, how the Trylon balances the desire to show obscure films with the need to make money, and many more incredible insights into what makes the Trylon experience so special.

Get tickets to the Trylon Tenth-Anniversary Celebration at https://www.trylon.org/film/trylon-tenth-anniversary-celebration/ and follow them @TrylonCinema on Twitter and @trylon_cinema on Instagram.

Follow us at @trylovepodcast on Twitter and email us at [email protected] to get in touch!

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Featuring special guest Nick Ransbottom!

VIDEODROME repurposes our own understanding of our bodies to tell a different story about critical media viewing. But does its wide lens preclude it from making a more pointed statement?

Fuck James Woods.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Full of Seussian grotesqueries and allegorical slavery, FANTASTIC PLANET is probably remembered for exactly what it deserves to be remembered for (creative, creepy, crawly creatures, trippy visuals, and an extremely 1970s soundtrack). What it doesn't deliver is the intangible, experimental storytelling psychedelia that its marketing seems to sell the movie on. Do its depictions of sexuality, society, and subjugation go far enough to leave an impression? Sure. Do they go far enough to say anything coherent or meaningful? Probably not.

Selection of "Strip Tease" from the FANTASTIC PLANET soundtrack presumed © 1973 Argos Films. Because of course, the track is literally titled "Strip Tease." Jesus Christ.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Content warning: Consistent stylized violence and one instance of attempted sexual assault.

Katsuhiro Otomo’s film adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga, AKIRA, pits brother against brother as stand-in for the larger confrontation bubbling beneath the cracked asphalt of Neo-Tokyo’s bloody streets: a reckoning between the military, youth culture, masculinity, and nuclear anxieties with the shared trauma of old Tokyo’s annihilation. That thesis is complemented by florid, genre-benchmark animation and Shoji Yamashiro’s animalistic score, both of which put it – and long-form anime – on the international stage.

"You Called for Me: Masculine Pain and Isolation in Akira" by Gretchen Felker-Martin: https://blog.vrv.co/felker-martin/2555/akira-boys/

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

THE HIDDEN is an '80s movie like many '80s movies in that it's super tropey, kinda gross, full of zany practical effects, and sloppily aimed at the conservativism of the age. Its twists on the burgeoning action/horror genre include some progressive(???) gender politics, a direct indictment of the American political schema (in which a white male need only say "I want to be president" to become president), and a rumination self-actualization under a capitalist dystopia. You're in Reagan's world now, baby.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Thicc men, thin characters. We sure as hell didn't see THIS one at the Trylon!

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Featuring special guests Ben Hanson and John Carson!

Directed by Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING, 28 DAYS LATER) and written by Alex Garland (EX MACHINA, ANNIHILATION), SUNSHINE is a fun little space thing with dreams of being the next big postmodern space opera. What it ends up being is more of a bizarre tonal roller coaster (hitting all the notes from courtroom drama to odyssey thriller to gross-out slasher) that forces its characters to accept one universal truth: you can't escape the sun.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.

Strap in for a second STORY about POLICE! The follow-up to Jackie Chan's blockbuster POLICE STORY (1985) doubles down on the stunts, explosions, and smarm of the original and adds more plot than is strictly necessary (about 25 minutes' worth). Despite that, and some reprehensible treatment of a deaf/mute villain, it's still a fun moment-to-moment movie that juggles violence and comedy with an appreciable subplot that moves Chan Ka-kui and May's relationship forward (a sweet thing which none of us really expected it to do).

"英雄故事" / "Hero Story" instrumental presumed property of Golden Way Films Ltd.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/half-assed imitations of John Waters's "No Smoking" PSA by Jason and Cody.

CW: some discussions of violence towards women (as played for comedy).

Whatever else Jackie Chan is (poet, philosopher, philanderer, tax evader, bigot, tool of the state), he's a man who understands that the best part of martial arts is its humor. Like the best of Chan's work, POLICE STORY is a creative, reactionary, and funny celebration of the beauty of expressive motion. It also has a minute-long scene of Jackie Chan stepping in shit and moonwalking it off his shoes. So yeah. Perfect film.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters.