Filmsuck
Filmsuck is a bi-weekly podcast hosted by Eileen Jones, film critic at Jacobin magazine, and Dolores McElroy, a lecturer in film and media at UC Berkeley. They discuss the rotten state of cinema, its relationship to politics, and occasional bursts of brilliance. The podcast is supported by Patreon for bonus episodes and perks.
Episodes
Spring TV Potpourri
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores provide a rundown on what's on TV, which starts off as a cheerful endeavor and ends up in a state of despondency over our grim cultural moment.
We report on the third season in twenty years of THE COMEBACK, the HBO Max cringe comedy starring Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, an eternally optimistic and terminally obtuse former TV sitcom star of the late 1980s-‘90s trying
DISCLOSURE DAY: Nostalgia for the Summer Blockbuster
Filmsuck co-hosts enjoy the old-fashioned movie-fun of watching what's essentially one long chase in the new Steven Spielberg action-adventure DISCLOSURE DAY. It's his return to sci-fi alien-invasion-themed movies that are a specialty of his represented by CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982), and WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005). It's true that DISCLOSURE DAY might
NATCHEZ: Mississippi Goddam
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores praise the complex and ultimately harrowing Susannah Herbert documentary NATCHEZ, currently streaming on YouTube and Apple TV+ and soon to arrive at PBS. It focuses on the engine driving this Mississippi River port town's economy, which is tourism—specifically the guided tours through plantation houses that have, for nearly a hundred years, "stuck to the script" of the
Chris Fleming: Saving Stand-up Comedy
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores express their admiration and affection for comedian Chris Fleming and his hilarious new HBO special CHRIS FLEMING: LIVE AT THE PALACE. Highly recommended!
You may know Fleming from his dazzling comic flights on YouTube and Instagram, but as Fleming puts it, this special is designed to expand his audience beyond "women who brought a knife to prom." Wearing a four-way-str
HAMNET: Good Grief
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores resisted seeing HAMNET, so they both marvel at the emotional impact it achieves by the poignant ending, when almost everyone in theater audiences dissolves into tears. HAMNET is a period tragedy by Chloe Zhao (NOMADLAND) that’s been playing in arthouse theaters for two months. It’s still drawing crowds, and it’s nominated for a number of Academy Awards including Best Fi
THE BRIDE! A Messy Monster Mash
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that the title character in writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s THE BRIDE!, played by Jessie Buckley (who also portrays the wry, raddled spirit of author Mary Shelley) is terrific. She has a brilliantly disheveled look of undead glamor featuring wild bleached-blonde hair, wonderfully garish orange dress, black lips, and the inky splotch that spews up from the corn
The Schism Over THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE
Co-hosts disagree on THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, a new film about the title character (played by Amanda Seyfried) who founded the Shaker religion. Eileen liked it because she has a morbid religious streak that makes her obsessively interested in movies about old-time people who see visions and start mad spiritual communities. Dolores, on the other hand, hates movies set in the 18th century “when eve
FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER: Here's to Strained Family Relations
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores found Jim Jarmusch’s new indie film Father Mother Sister Brother a sleep-inducing slog. It’s a comedy-drama anthology film in three chapters about difficult family relationships that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and stars Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling. Jarmusch calls it an “anti-action film” that avoids c
A Very TV Christmas
In honor of the season, co-hosts Eileen and Dolores take on the made-for-TV holiday movie, focusing especially on the perennial Hallmark Channel favorite, A SHOE ADDICT’S CHRISTMAS (2018). It’s about a thirtysomething department store employee and shoe-lover named Noelle (Candace Cameron Bure) who’s lost both her creative and romantic mojo, which leads her guardian angel Charlie (Jean Smart) to us
FRANKENSTEIN: Guillermo Del Toro's Grand and Goofy Obsession
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores disagree when it comes to their basic reactions to the new FRANKENSTEIN, written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro and currently playing on Netflix. Whereas Dolores finds a number of aspects of the film compelling, such the opulent production design, the sensitive performances of Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth, and the all-out melodramatic emotionalism typical of Del Toro,
BUGONIA: The Rhetorical Impasse
Co-host Eileen Jones and special guest Conan Neutron of the Movie Night Extravaganza podcast enthuse about the wild and riveting new Yorgos Lanthimos film, Bugonia. It concerns a pair of rural cousins, played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis, who abduct the CEO of a pharmaceutical company (Emma Stone), convinced she’s an alien come to destroy planet Earth through corporate means. Their plan is to
It's a Good Time for ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is a must-see movie and a model for American filmmaking right now. An adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel VINELAND, ONE BATTLE makes brilliant use of such dynamic genres as action, dark comedy, and the political thriller to drive this depiction of an aging radical leftist in hiding, hilariously played by L
Darren Aronofsky CAUGHT STEALING a Good Time
New Filmsuck episode! Dolores and I enthuse about CAUGHT STEALING. It's doing pretty badly at the box-office, though it's a timely dark comic noir of chaotic working class life, and Austin Butler has a delightful co-star in the cat actor playing Bud.
Straying into Documentaries
Special guest Asali Echols, documentary filmmaker, talks to me about the current state of documentary films. We discuss a recent trend toward reviving the strict "observational documentary," led by filmmakers like Elizabeth Lo, whose breakthrough film was the dog's-eye-view movie STRAY (2020). Her upcoming new doc MISTRESS DISPELLER, about a "love industry" in China involving wives hiring undercov
Cracking Ourselves Up: Self-presentation in Onscreen Comedy: PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF
New Filmsuck episode! While Dolores is making the world safe for opera in Santa Fe, I'm talking to my friend M Dalebout, whose area of scholarly expertise is identity construction in onscreen comedy. We start off with the 2025 HBO Max documentary PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF!
How Much is TOO MUCH?
New Filmsuck episode! I rage against Lena Dunham, who cursed us all with GIRLS and is back doing further harm to impressionable minds everywhere with her new, semi-autobiographical Netflix romantic comedy TOO MUCH. Dolores has a more measured reaction to this low-stakes entertainment about an arrested development case played by Megan Stalter (HACKS) who tries to get over a bad breakup by relocatin
WHITE LOTUS Season 4: How Deep is the Water?
Season 4 of Mike White's big hit show WHITE LOTUS might not be the most profound thing you've ever seen, but Dolores and Eileen still enjoy its excellent cast reveling in portraying the latest tales of ghastly behaviors of the rich.
Praise for SINNERS
Co-hosts Dolores and Eileen enthuse about the messy but compelling thrills of Ryan Coogler's delirious Deep South vampire extravaganza!
JOHN WICK and BALLERINA: Seeking Rough Justice
Action film enthusiasts rejoice! Special guest Forrest "Flacko" Miller of the lively and popular Movie Night Extravaganza podcast joins co-host Eileen Jones for an episode delving into the everybody's-a-killer world of JOHN WICK 1 - 4, including the new riotously violent spin-off BALLERINA starring Ana de Armas. Discussion includes wild speculation about the likely plot for the upcoming JOHN WICK
Meet Your Heroes Part Deux: Interviewing Todd Haynes
All about that time Dolores interviewed her favorite living director Todd Haynes (SAFE, FAR FROM HEAVEN, I'M NOT THERE, CAROL, MAY DECEMBER)--which was only two weeks ago! Filmsuck co-hosts exult in all things Haynes, including his films, his academic background, his current political take, his unforgettable meeting with Barbra Streisand, his cocktail of choice, his upcoming projects, and much, mu
This Absurd Ritual, The Oscars
Late in the narcotizing Oscars 2025 telecast, host Conan O'Brien made the oddly poignant promise that "Through trauma and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here." It was a weird, oblique, it'll-be-okay reference to the seismic upheavals in America, after the whole nearly-four-hour show had made a point of avoiding any reference to them. Notice the absence of any outspoken left-wing
We're Still Here
Talking about I'M STILL HERE, a new political drama based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva about the fracturing of his leftist family in the early 1970s, during the right-wing military dictatorship in Brazil. It's the latest film by Walter Salles (MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, CENTRAL STATION), who knew the Paiva family personally, and it's Brazil's biggest film hit since the Covid pandemic. It's
Dissecting David Lynch
It's a Very Special Filmsuck episode open to the public! Co-host Eileen Jones interviews writer and cinephile Alex Deley, who wrote a fantastic piece for JACOBIN magazine about the glories of Lynch films.
Cohost Experience Uneven FLOW
We've got a rare total disagreement between co-hosts when it comes to FLOW, the highly praised Latvian animated feature that's up for Oscars for both Best Animated Film and Best International Film. Dolores found this dialogue-free tale of a housecat and several other animals trying to survive a disastrous flood moving, inspiring, and perhaps the greatest film this year. Whereas Eileen—who generall
NOSFERATU: Robert Eggers' Dark Dream
Can't get enough of that new NOSFERATU, so co-hosts Eileen and Dolores are debating its merits and demerits while at the same time embracing the film as a cinephile must-see.
Holding Space for "Glicked"
Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores take the "Glicked" challenge and watch WICKED and GLADIATOR II back-to-back. Here are hilarious our survivor's tales.
Season of the Witch
Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores celebrate Halloween with a discussion of the witch films currently featured in the Criterion Channel series. They include such favorites as BLACK SUNDAY, SUSPIRIA, THE WITCHES, THE CRUCIBLE, and THE LOVE WITCH, but the most exciting discovery is IL DEMONIO (THE DEMON), a 1963 Italian Neo-realist film featuring a spider-walking peasant woman whose exorcism clear
BEETLEJUICE Returns to the Living
Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores celebrate the long-awaited sequel BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE, thirty-six years after Tim Burton's beloved 1988 comedy hit. Michael Keaton is back as the high-living undead title character, a "freelance bioexorcist," along with Winona Ryder as former depressed teen Lydia Deetz, now a perplexed middle-aged woman with an alienated daughter of her own played by Jenna
Back Episode: ADVENTURELAND and the Summer Amusement Park Film
Summer's nearly over and we're looking at the effect of carnivals and amusement parks in such hot-weather hits as ADVENTURELAND (2009), ZOMBIELAND (2009), THE LOST BOYS (1987), and SOME CAME RUNNING (1958).
Faye Dunaway: Don't Fuck with Me, Fellas!
Filmsuck co-hosts tackle the life and career of thorny but fascinating star Faye Dunaway, which is the topic of the new HBO Max documentary FAYE. Her long and turbulent stage and screen career includes such memorable films as BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, CHINATOWN, NETWORK, MOMMIE DEAREST, and BARFLY.
Deborah Kerr Rhymes with Star!
New Filmsuck episode! We're celebrating Scottish-born actor Deborah Kerr ("...rhymes with star!") whose stardom in 1940s England got her a Hollywood studio contract and a "ladylike" star image she had to fight in order to get better roles. She ought to be better known for her unusual air of compassion and worldly wisdom and her many great performances in such films as THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL
Drive Away Dolls: An Experiment in Fun
Filmsuck co-hosts agree that this funny low-budget film by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, which is the first film of their "lesbian B-movie trilogy," represents a challenge to our dull American film era.
The Book of Barbra: Surveying Streisand
Co-hosts grapple with the new Barbra Streisand memoir, a 900+ page tome called MY NAME IS BARBRA that came out in November 2023 but takes three months to read. Latest Filmsuck! Co-host Dolores, a devoted fan of the EGOT award-winning singer-actor-producter-director, brings impressive insight to the way Streisand "needs a hostile world" in order to thrive creatively. The memoir's fascinating early
Agonizing Over the Academy Awards
We're wading into the Oscar nominations and the people who hate them!
MAESTRO and the Mess that is the Biopic
In this episode, we talk about the sad mess that is the biopic genre, with MAESTRO, currently playing on Netflix, as one of our main examples. Dolores takes a reasonable stance on the biopic, praising the good ones and indicating the fascination of the form for a certain type of audience, and Eileen says, "Kill it with fire!"
POOR THINGS: Is It a GreatThing?
Filmsuck co-hosts round out 2023 and blaze into 2024 with an epic hashing-out of the flamboyantly gorgeous new Yorgos Lanthimos film POOR THINGS that reunites him with his creative team from THE FAVORITE (2018), screenwriter Tony McNamara and lead actor-producer Emma Stone. Stone plays a kind of female Frankenstein's monster created in a laboratory by a reclusive "mad scientist" played by William
Todd Haynes’ Mature Take
Co-hosts agree that Todd Haynes gripping new melodrama MAY DECEMBER is one of his best! The film has been nominated for several Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature, Best Director for Haynes, Best First Screenplay for Samy Burch, and Best Lead Actor for Natalie Portman. (But not Julianne Moore or Charles Melton? WTF?)
Blessings on THE CURSE
Filmsuck co-hosts hash out the agonizingly compelling cringe-comedy series THE CURSE--created by Nathan Fielder and Bennie Safdie, who also star alongside Emma Stone--and arrive at amazing insights explaining all of contemporary life. This podcast is such a bargain!
Pre-Code Halloween Party: Two From Boris Karloff
New Filmsuck episode! A Halloween celebration of Boris Karloff in two of his pre-Code films: THE OLD DARK HOUSE and THE BLACK CAT! He's best known for FRANKENSTEIN, but Karloff gave so many great performances, it's a good time to appreciate his range. Many of his films are widely available, but these two more obscure ones are part of the current Criterion Channel "Per-Code Horror" series.
Bottoms: New Teen Comedy is Tops
Filmsuck co-hosts revel in a raucous low-budget comedy called Bottoms that's playing at a theater near you, and doing amazingly well with critics and young audiences. It's about a high school girls-only fight club--excuse me, "women's self-defense class"--and it's so refreshingly funny and irreverent about the tired cliches of the high school comedy genre, today's toothless feminism, America's cra
Old Broads Hit the Road
Latest Filmsuck! Our "Old Broads Hit the Road" episode features a discussion of a promising film/TV trend involving older women on the move seeking liberatory experiences in ELLE S'EN VA (ON MY WAY, 2013), JUANITA (2019), HACKS (2021-), and MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS (2021).
Go Bears: Why We’re Still Thinking About THE BEAR Seasons 1 & 2
Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that the relentless affect and unusual staying power of the FX/Hulu series The Bear makes it a rare example of popular art in the tradition of the family-torment plays of Eugene O'Neill and Edward Albee. A belated tribute!
BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Doll
Latest Filmsuck! Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree on finding Greta Gerwig's BARBIE surprisingly funny and delightful, and Christopher Nolan's OPPENHEIMER a ponderous, unenlightening snore. In order to argue these contentious views, we have to get into the gritty details, so this is a spoilers-galore episode!
Asteroid City: Wes Anderson’s Alien Affect
Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores fearlessly defy obsessive Wes Anderson fans in reviling his soul-deadening, seersucker suit sensibility!
Somebody Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Hangin’ in the Heartland
In this year's Filmsuck Pride Month episode, we’re talking about the fresh and funny HBO series Somebody Somewhere. It’s just wrapped up its second season and been renewed for a third, so if you haven’t been watching it, now is a good time to catch up with this offbeat show that fans have been raving about and wondering why it doesn’t get more attention. It’s about a forty-something ex-bartender n
Retelling the Stars: Little Richard and Brooke Shields
Filmsuck co-hosts talk about two new documentaries that deal with two wildly different celebrities, each negotiating a lifetime of public performances beginning in childhood--Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields on Hulu, and Little Richard: I Am Everything, available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+. Rejected by his father, a minister who also operated a bar and sold bootleg whiskey on the side, the blazi
Dead Ringers: Dead-on or DOA?
Latest Filmsuck episode! Co-hosts Dolores and Eileen tackle the new Amazon Prime miniseries DEAD RINGERS, based on the 1988 David Cronenberg body-horror freakout classic, and featuring Rachel Weisz in the roles of disturbingly codependent twin gynecologists once played by Jeremy Irons. The miniseries oddly combines feminist topicality with the old good-vs.-evil-twin tropes of melodramas that used
Poker Face: No Bullshit, It’s Good
Latest Filmsuck episode! A tribute to Poker Face, the hit Peacock series created by writer-director Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion) with a starring role tailor-made for the marvelous Natasha Lyonne. She plays Charlie Cale, Las Vegas cocktail waitress turned amateur sleuth with a special gift for detecting when people are lying, which is a lot of the time. But it's the lies about murder that
Emily and the Blasphemed Brontes
Filmsuck co-hosts disagree over the new Emily Bronte biopic, Emily, currently playing in theaters. Dolores likes the way the film depicts the creative development of the author of the towering Gothic novel Wuthering Heights, and Eileen--a Bronte Sisters devotee--hates it so much she's willing to see the world burn if only this film could be destroyed. Well, tastes differ.
Joel Coen in Person: Definitely Meet Your Heroes
Since the recording of co-host Eileen's interview with Joel Coen and Frances McDormand about The Tragedy of Macbeth is not going to be widely released after all--a decision made by Coen himself in accordance with the curating team at the Pacific Film Archive where the screening and interview took place--here's a fulsome discussion of the event with co-host Dolores, who was in attendance that eveni
The Pale Blue Eye: Poe Lingers On
The new Netflix film The Pale Blue Eye, featuring Harry Melling as Edgar Allan Poe when he was an eccentric young West Point cadet, here aiding an alcoholic detective (Christian Bale) to solve the grisly murder of a fellow cadet at the military academy. The film's a train-wreck, and a good opportunity for co-hosts Eileen and Dolores to rant about the strange dearth of Poe biopics and adaptations o
Holiday Movie Meldown
BONUS Filmsuck episode for holidays! Dolores and Eileen discuss the Christmas movies they can't or won't see because childhood trauma, and offer up some alternative holiday films for your viewing pleasure. Dolores suggests Goodfellas as heartwarming family fare, and Eileen recommends Curse of the Cat People a a lovely yuletide entertainment.
White Lotus: Playing in the Shallow End
Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores grapple with their bewildering lack of love for White Lotus, the highly praised, much-Emmy-ed HBO Max series satirizing the vacationing ruling class. Sorry in advance to all those who revere it!
A Big Hand for Banshees of Inisherin
Filmsuck co-hosts enthuse about the new Martin McDonagh film The Banshees of Inisherin, a dark comedy that turns pitch-black by the end! Set in 1923 Ireland as the civil war rages on the mainland, this fable-like tale reunites Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, the stars of McDonagh's 2009 cult favorite In Bruges, as former friends whose increasingly bitter estrangement creates severe consequences
Tracking the Vampire
For your Halloween pleasure and edification, this week on Filmsuck we're talking about the vampire film from Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1931), and Vampyr (1932) through Martin (1976), The Hunger (1983), Near Dark (1987), Let the Right One In (2008), and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), in order to analyze how this popular movie monster represents such an array of human fears and desires, i
Three Thousand Years of Longing for This Film to End
Both Filmsuck co-hosts hated the new George Miller movie Three Thousand Years of Longing, a feeling shared by audiences everywhere, it seems, as the romantic fantasy wastes the talents of Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba in the lead roles and becomes one of the biggest box-office failures of 2022. The film raises the question "Why can't mainstream filmmakers do emotionally powerful movies about love a
Bullet Trainwreck
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
2 Yeps for Nope
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
Elvis and the Hysteria of Baz Luhrmann
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 entre
Proud of Hacks
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
The Northman and the Strange Career of Robert Eggers
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
Witchfest! A Discussion of Recent Witch Movies
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
Parallel Mothers and Almodovar’s New Groove
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
Tragedy of Macbeth: A Banquet for Starving Film-Lovers
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'
Nightmare Alleys and Film Noir
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 ul
West Side Stories and the Musical
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
Todd Haynes: Avant-garde with Heart
Todd Haynes is co-host Dolores McElroy’s “favorite living director” for his films’ “meticulousness” and “visual splendor,” but above all the way he loves his subjects and makes them “vibrant and romantic”! Dressed for life at the front of a classroom, Haynes always projects the air of a nice, well-adjusted teacher--and indeed, he figured he’d wind up as a teacher who made experimental films on the
Liza Minnelli: Pizzazz with 4 Zs
We know we’ve sung high praises for all our Great Old Broads, but wow, was Liza Minnelli an amazing talent! In our final installment of the series, we discuss this multi-media star, tailor-made for the New Hollywood of the 1960s. Even though she had famous Hollywood movie studio parents, Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Liza initially propelled herself toward life as a dancer and actor on stage
Elizabeth Taylor Part 2: The Last Star
So much Liz that we needed two episodes to deal with all that stardom. Here we cover everything from the Liz-starring film epic Cleopatra that bankrupted 20th Century-Fox to near-death from pneumonia and an emergency tracheotomy to the scandalous Liz-and-Dick romance that included two marriages to Richard Burton plus one rebuke from the Pope to her Oscar-winning performance at age thirty-four as m
Soft, Pink, and Posh: The Cinema of Sofia Coppola
Here's our very special Filmsuck episode featuring author and film columnist Jessa Crispin, who joins us in a gleeful, long-overdue takedown of Sofia Coppola films!
Vivien Leigh: Scorpio Rising
In the latest Filmsuck episode, we're talking scary-beautiful sorceress-star Vivien Leigh who played Scarlett O'Hara and Cleopatra and Anna Karenina and Blanch DuBois and many other iconic film roles. We also take on the recent, remarkably stupid film studies scholarship about her.
Gloria Swanson: Have They Forgotten What a Star Looks Like?
We're kicking off our "Great Old Broads" series with the fabulously overdressed silent screen star Gloria Swanson, who set out to become a definitive figure of excess in the highly excessive Hollywood of the 1910s and 1920s. You know her as Norma Desmond, the unforgettably mad has-been star determined on making a comeback ("I hate that word! It's 'return'!") in the great 1950 film Sunset Boulevard
Heatwave Horror
In this Filmsuck Summer Film Series (FSFS) episode we're focusing on horror films set in vacation settings. We discuss the beachy shock effects of Jaws and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and especially concentrate on the lakeside summer camp slasher terrors of Friday the 13th. Our special guest Ian Miller joins us to discuss the original Friday the 13th (1980), which was written by his father, s
The Girls of Summer
We're kicking off our Filmsuck Summer Film Series (FSFS for short) with a tribute to films and TV about teen girls making the most of their magical interlude of freedom. We're also sharing some partially hidden gems that you might not know about: 2018 indie film Skate Kitchen and its current HBO series spin-off Betty, both directed by Crystal Moselle, about the NYC adventures of a real-life female
Halston Held Hostage by Ryan Murphy
This week we're taking on the Ryan Murphy Problem by examining the new five-episode Netflix series Halston, produced and co-written by Murphy. It stars Ewan McGregor as the famous one-name fashion designer whose spectacular rise backed by huge corporate money made him a king of NYC in the Studio 54 era, and whose equally spectacular fall in a cloud of cocaine powder stripped him of nearly everythi
Tallulah Bankhead - Never Boring
In this episode of Filmsuck we justify our love for Tallulah Bankhead, the sensational star of stage, screen, radio, and television whose outrageous wit, frank enjoyment of recreational drugs and alcohol, and wild sexual adventuring made her as famous as her acting from the 1920s to the 1960s. She used to tell reporters, "Say anything about me, dahling, as long as it isn't boring," and we do our d
Tennessee Williams on Film
Happy 110th birthday, TW! In this episode of Filmsuck we're reveling in the mind-blowing film adaptations of Tennessee Williams' great plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Night of the Iguana (1964). The most celebrated American playwright of the mid-20th century, Williams' riveting explorations of tormented sexuality, lacer
Bridgerton: WTF
This is, in a way, a continuation of last week’s special Anti-Valentine’s Day episode about “peak libido” and unsexy cinema and television, because we’re talking about the supposed counter-example of Bridgerton, which is getting raves for its red-hot period-piece sexiness. Special guest co-host Emily Robbins helps Eileen fathom the Regency romance subgenre in order to understand the phenomenon tha
Anti-Valentine's Day and Unsexy Cinema
Today in honor of this awful holiday we're doing an anti-Valentine's Day episode, lamenting the dreary unsexiness of most film and television of our time. We're wondering if it's part of a much larger phenomenon--the depletion of erotic energy in our collective existence that's running alongside the depletion of other planetary resources. That's the topic of the book we're discussing entitled Peak
Fascinating Fascism
In the latest Filmsuck episode we take on the depressingly timely topic of fascist aesthetics, in terms of historical development and cinematic representations. For example, did you know that the success of the notorious white supremacist film Birth of a Nation (1915) inspired both a resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan but also their adoption of the full white-hood-and-robe uniform featured in the film
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