Trylove

Inside its genre ‘guardrails,’ WITNESS tells the story of worlds brought together by tragedy – but whose intersection point (a haggard Harrison Ford and a repressed Kelly McGillis) exemplifies the deep, dignified richness of human love and connection. Also, Angus MacInnes dies horribly via grain entrapment and Danny Glover’s guts get spilled in cow shit.

Watch WITNESS on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Witness_1985

Get tickets to the Peter Weir series at the Trylon: https://www.trylon.org/films/category/peter-weir/

“Harrison Ford and the Power of Star Persona in Witness and The Mosquito Coast” by John Blair for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/08/25/harrison-ford-and-the-power-of-star-persona-in-witness-and-the-mosquito-coast/

Roger Ebert’s 1985 review of WITNESS: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/witness-1985

“Peter Weir’s ‘Witness’: A Deep, Subtle and Complex Social Comment Disguised as a Police Thriller” by Sven Mikulec for Cinephilia & Beyond (containing an excerpt of Virginia Campbell’s interview with Peter Weir for Movieline in 1998): https://cinephiliabeyond.org/peter-weirs-witness-deep-subtle-complex-social-comment-disguised-police-thriller/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: “Main Theme” by Maurice Jarre from the WITNESS soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 242: WITNESS (1985)

3:05 - The episode actually starts

9:15 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

11:20 - First reactions to WITNESS and its ‘guardrail moments’

21:52 - Is WITNESS too married to its genre inspirations?

43:00 - Peter Weir’s rewritten ‘hopeless’ ending

53:29 - The Junk Drawer

1:05:01 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:09:48 - Cody’s Noteys: Bearing WITNESS (August trivia through the years)

It’s not quite like the Jackie Chan movies you might be expecting. It’s more bizarre and slightly less martial arts-focused – but once you get on its wavelength, it’s truly a joy of a screwball action comedy.

Watch TWIN DRAGONS (English subs) on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/jackie-chans-twin-dragons-full-movie-english-sub

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: "In Ancient Times" by Shirley Kwan and performed by Maggie Cheung from the TWIN DRAGONS soundtrack.

Timestamps

5:15 - The episode actually starts

8:00 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

9:55 - The Jackie Chan charming asshole spectrum

16:28 - Where it departs from other Jackie Chan movies

26:34 - The double climax

30:31 - Aaron’s Proustian experience with TWIN DRAGONS and THE TUXEDO (2002)

35:35 - The one where Jason directs TWIN DRAGONS

42:14 - Where TWIN DRAGONS decides to lean in and where it doesn’t

50:27 - TWIN DRAGONS underrated?

52:34 - The Junk Drawer

1:00:31 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

The opposition leader is dead, clubbed in the city square for all to see – and the ruling dictatorship does everything it can, which is literally everything, to deny responsibility. Z is a fictional account of the real, state-conducted assassination of a Greek leftist politician, but its satire achieves a degree of incisiveness rarely seen in the modern political thriller.

By showing the audience the planning, execution, and cover-up, Z is less about the mystery and more about the mechanics of dictatorial hegemony: With the crime plain as day, the plot follows the denial, coercion, censorship, retaliation, and suppression they leverage to pretend their power is still in the shadows.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: "Main Title (O Andonis)" by Mikis Theodorakis from the Z soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 240: Z (1969)

3:32 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

7:26 - Cynicism and the edge political thrillers have lost since Z

21:22 - How the plot lulls the audience into believing everything’s gonna be okay

30:57 - The dictatorship’s rhetoric

43:23 - An opposition party defined as much by what they don’t do as what they do

45:32 - The ending

51:00 - The Junk Drawer

57:18 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

Featuring Natalie Marlin (https://twitter.com/NataliesNotInIt)!

Even though MILLENNIUM MAMBO shows us a vivid portrait of Vicky, a woman struggling with personal change at the dawn of the millennium, it’s arguably not REALLY about that. It’s almost more about her relationship to herself – rather, to the version of herself who makes those choices – as narrated by Vicky 10 years in the future.

Vicky’s hushed voiceover and swallowed admissions build a narrative of her recursive patterns in 2001: Her tumultuous relationship with the manipulative Hao Hao, her would-be partnership with kindhearted criminal Jack, her run-ins with the Taipei nightclub scene, and her frequent returns to snowy Hokkaido. At the same time, they’re calling attention to the wants and desires of 2011 Vicky, calling into question how inescapable some loops really are.

“Millennium Fades” by Natalie Marlin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/08/04/millennium-fades/

Find Natalie…

- On Twitter at https://twitter.com/NataliesNotInIt

- On Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/framingthepic/

- On Trylove Episode 162: THE THIRD MAN (1949), Episode 182: CHESS OF THE WIND (1979), Episode 197: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985), and Episode 210: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015)

The tweet about the Helsinki pallas cat Jason mentions at the top of the episode: https://twitter.com/NoNameGirl8686/status/1689794141033463808

Watch MILLENNIUM MAMBO on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/qian-xi-man-po-aka-millennium-mambo-2001

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music "A Pure Person" by Lim Giong from the MILLENNIUM MAMBO soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 239: MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001)

4:32 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:06 - New understandings through rewatch

13:16 - Narration and Vicky’s compassion for herself

32:00 - Color and the “ultra saturated” millennium

37:50 - Yubari and the bookending the movie with ellipses

52:54 - #NewYearNewMe and seeing different versions of yourself

1:00:50 - The soundtrack and the power of leitmotif

1:05:28 - The Junk Drawer

1:09:13 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

What if Toshirô Mifune was a little bit more of a churlish bastard – but what if that didn’t make you like him any less? You might get something like Hideo Gosha’s jidaigeki action film SAMURAI WOLF!

It’s a fun, contemporary take on some of Kurosawa’s best movies and the tropes they codified, with a wandering ronin taking on the cause of the underdog and finding more of his own humanity in the people he’s aiding – but also being kind of terrified of that discovery. Hired to aid a valuable rural shipping outpost deliver 30,000 pieces of gold for the regional shogun, Kiba Okaminosuke is challenged by the roving clans bandit clans who claim the nearby town, a shadowy ronin with far fewer scruples than Kiba himself, and the affection of a blind widow with some skeletons of her own.

Get tickets to “HIDEO GOSHA: WANDERING RONIN” (Aug 2023 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/wandering-ronin/

SAMURAI WOLF was shown at the Trylon with support from the Japan America Society of Minnesota https://www.mn-japan.org/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music composed by Toshiaki Tsushima from the SAMURAI WOLF soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 238: SAMURAI WOLF (1966)

2:25 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, LLC)

4:40 - A shaggy-dog version of YOJIMBO

18:25 - Kiba’s spin on the wandering ronin archetype

25:14 - Sanai and the corruption of desire

32:25 - The ending and running from growing up

45:34 - The Junk Drawer

52:46 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:01:20 - Cody’s Noteys: Awooo, Try-wolves of Love-don (wolf-related movie trivia)

A self-sentenced prisoner in Plato’s cave, Marcello Clerici thinks he chooses the shadows. Marcello doesn’t want to be a fascist. He doesn’t want to be an anti-fascist, either. He doesn’t want to be an academic, an assassin, a husband, son, straight, or gay. He wants to be normal. He wants to be nothing.

THE CONFORMIST is a dizzying psycho-political thriller that digs into the motivations that lead worms like Marcello to follow fascist ideology (or any ideology).

Watch THE CONFORMIST for free on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/the.-conformist.-1970.-italian.-1080p.-blu-ray.-h-264.-aac-vxt

Use IMDb Collaborations, the tool Cody uses in this episode’s Cody’s Noteys segment: https://www.imdb.com/search/common/

“Animula Vagula Blandula: (Un)Masking Clerici in The Conformist” by Chris Ryba-Tures for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/07/21/animula-vagula-blandula-unmasking-clerici-in-the-conformist/

“The Conformist: Finding Purpose in a Fascist State” by Eli Holm for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/07/21/the-conformist-finding-purpose-in-a-fascist-state/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: "Chi è più felice di me" composed by Cesare A. Bixio and arranged by Georges Delerue from the THE CONFORMIST soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 237: THE CONFORMIST (1970)

2:34 - The episode actually starts

3:50 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.)

5:41 - Adapting fascist ideology into daily society

14:09 - “The physical movement of a political movement”

18:47 - The hidden depth of the ‘allegory of the cave’ scene

26:36 - How Manganiello counters Marcello’s better angels

29:47 - The myth of the “new Italian” and complete self-erasure

46:13 - Anna and Luca in Paris

52:30 - The Junk Drawer

56:32 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:07:17 - Cody’s Noteys: The Common-formist (shared cast + crew trivia)

We’re back with some relatively rapid-fire thoughts on a few of the biggest movies of the summer! ASTEROID CITY is sentimental bliss, DIAL OF DESTINY uses and abuses nostalgia, DEAD RECKONING’s villain is megastupid, BARBIE is a good-natured romp, and OPPENHEIMER is by turns awe-inspiring and embarrassing.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Music: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"What I’ve Done" by Linkin Park.

Timestamps

0:00 - Puff Puff MoviePass: ASTEROID CITY, DIAL OF DESTINY, DEAD RECKONING, BARBIE, OPPENHEIMER (2023)

2:37 - ASTEROID CITY

16:04 - INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY

33:24 - MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART 1

50:54 - BARBIE

1:08:33 - OPPENHEIMER

In the first half, he’s a hero – in the second, he’s losing his mind. T.E. Lawrence is the conflicted figure who inserts himself into the Arab Revolt during World War I, only to find his reputation, sanity, and very identity hanging in the balance.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is one of the best regarded movies of all time. Normally, that raises an eyebrow, but in this case, we find it’s absolutely still true. It’s a multifaceted portrait not just of the soldier-turned-diplomat thrillseeker but of the entire British insertion into the Arabian Peninsula. Its strength is in its scope: Impossibly wide vistas frame four men sitting in a tent as broadly as entire tribes, rarely letting a single face speak for itself. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is interested not in iconoclasm or image rehabilitation – only a complex, awesome portrait of a complex, awesome event and the people who shaped it.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: "Overture" from the LAWRENCE OF ARABIA soundtrack by Maurice Jarre.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 236: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

1:38 - The episode actually starts

3:06 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.)

6:45 - Expectations of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA vs. the reality

14:43 - Broadening the scope beyond Lawrence

24:50 - The Lawrence we meet in the first half vs. the Lawrence we know in the second half

39:27 - The allegory of Lawrence

50:25 - The Junk Drawer

52:57 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

58:37 - Cody’s Noteys: Try-Lawrence of Arabi-love

The reasons why some critics decried SUPER FLY on its release aren’t ours to criticize (but we make that mistake on this episode a couple times anyway), but they’re important to understanding its long-term impact.

The bone it picks with the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement – that many of its victories were pyrrhic, and that America still has far to go before it can claim racial equity – makes it feel ahead of its time and very much of its time. Its actual function as a movie may have aged less than beautifully (it’s not actually that much fun to watch or follow along with), but its combination of style (hello The Curtis Mayfield Experience) and cynicism give SUPER FLY an outsized cultural influence that precedes itself.

Listen to an episode of Jason’s other podcast, CrossFade, where he and Matt Helgeson discussed the music of SUPER FLY (and Rush’s 2112) with video game composer Jason Graves: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/curtis-mayfield-vs-rush-feat-jason-graves/id1501267072?i=1000524248893

“I’ll Let You Trip for Awhile: Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly” by Jay Ditzer for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/07/07/ill-let-you-trip-for-awhile-curtis-mayfields-super-fly/

Five Super Fly Hip-Hop Samples” by Matthew Tchepikova-Treon for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: “https://www.perisphere.org/2023/07/07/five-super-fly-hip-hop-samples/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Music throughout from the SUPER FLY soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 235: SUPER FLY (1972)

3:26 - The episode actually starts

5:56 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

9:13 - The sound of SUPER FLY, moralizing, and Priest’s self-determinism

29:42 - Contextualizing the 1972 critical response

39:47 - Was Sig Shore hip enough?

44:01 - Scenes that have no place in this movie

50:01 - The Junk Drawer

55:26 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

With returning guest and Perisphere senior editor Finn Odum!

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD might be the precursor to John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982), but the creature feature uses its tale of a plant-based alien invader to a vastly different end. Instead of honing in on the slow creep of bellicose masculinity, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD instead takes the opportunity to pound its chest at the Communist threat Capitalist America had come to fear during the Red Scare and continue to fight during the Cold War.

With Finn, we talk about the movie’s tendency to Other, its reliance on military might and imperialist common sense, and the mid-century shift in science fiction from fantastical, barely imaginable tales to a conservative, Earth-vs-outsiders worldview. Stick around for a first-ever extra-special bit: Finn’s Facts!

Find Finn…

On Twitter at https://twitter.com/Finnematic

On Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/finnofthedead/

On Trylove episodes about DIABOLIQUE (1955) and CON AIT (1997)

“In Soviet Russia, Carrot Eats YOU!” by Lucas Hardwick for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/06/30/in-soviet-russia-carrot-eats-you/

Listen to Trylove Episode 40: THE THING (1982) wherever you get podcasts

Watch THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951) and also a Pingu stop-motion homage to THE THING (a.k.a. “THINGU”) on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/01-the-thing-from-another-world

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: "Main Titles" from the THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD soundtrack by Dimitri Tiomkin.