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PODCAST

Filmsuck

Eileen Jones and Dolores McElroy

Support us on Patreon.com/filmsuck for bonus episodes and more perks! A weekly podcast hosted by Eileen Jones, film critic at Jacobin magazine and recovering academic, and Dolores McElroy, diva enthusiast and lecturer in film and media at UC Berkeley. In this podcast for the people, we bring you the truth about the rotten state of cinema, its often odious or ham-fisted relationship to politics, and its occasional wondrous bursts of courage and brilliance. We consider the glories of cinemas past,

tv & film

All Episodes

52:42

Drive Away Dolls: An Experiment in Fun

Filmsuck ·

2024/02/28

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.

en

01:16:55

The Book of Barbra: Surveying Streisand

Filmsuck ·

2024/02/14

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 chapters charting Streisand's youthful rise to fame bear this out, as she overcame harsh prejudices

en

01:00:46

Agonizing Over the Academy Awards

Filmsuck ·

2024/01/31

We're wading into the Oscar nominations and the people who hate them!

en

56:59

MAESTRO and the Mess that is the Biopic

Filmsuck ·

2024/01/16

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!"

en

54:36

POOR THINGS: Is It a GreatThing?

Filmsuck ·

2024/01/02

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 Dafoe. In this outre feminist fairy tale, she soon escapes to the Continent with a hedonistic lawyer

en

01:08:46

Todd Haynes’ Mature Take

Filmsuck ·

2023/12/05

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?)

en

01:01:52

Blessings on THE CURSE

Filmsuck ·

2023/11/21

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!

en

01:11:37

Pre-Code Halloween Party: Two From Boris Karloff

Filmsuck ·

2023/10/10

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.

en

01:02:14

Bottoms: New Teen Comedy is Tops

Filmsuck ·

2023/09/12

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 cratering educational system, and a lot of other contemporary pieties, we recommend it highly.

en

01:04:11

Old Broads Hit the Road

Filmsuck ·

2023/08/29

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).

en

57:47

Go Bears: Why We’re Still Thinking About THE BEAR...

Filmsuck ·

2023/08/15

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!

en

01:11:00

BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER: How We Learned to Stop...

Filmsuck ·

2023/08/01

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!

en

01:02:10

Asteroid City: Wes Anderson’s Alien Affect

Filmsuck ·

2023/07/04

Filmsuck co-hosts Eileen and Dolores fearlessly defy obsessive Wes Anderson fans in reviling his soul-deadening, seersucker suit sensibility!

en

58:28

Somebody Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Hangin’ in the...

Filmsuck ·

2023/06/20

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 named Sam Miller (played by audacious actor-singer-comedian Bridget Everett) who’s moved back to her

en

01:00:48

Retelling the Stars: Little Richard and Brooke Shields

Filmsuck ·

2023/05/10

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 blazingly talented and sexually fluid Little Richard left home early and soon combined the influences of

en

56:16

Dead Ringers: Dead-on or DOA?

Filmsuck ·

2023/04/26

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 to star Bette Davis (A Stolen Life, Dead Ringers) and Olivia De Havilland (Dark Mirror).

en

01:08:57

Poker Face: No Bullshit, It’s Good

Filmsuck ·

2023/03/22

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 obsess Charlie, a character inspired by the classic "howdunnit" mystery-of-the-week show Columbo,

en

01:01:22

Emily and the Blasphemed Brontes

Filmsuck ·

2023/03/08

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.

en

01:04:38

Joel Coen in Person: Definitely Meet Your Heroes

Filmsuck ·

2023/02/08

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 evening! Aspects of the entire "Joel Coen in Person" film series, which took place over two exhilarating

en

54:44

The Pale Blue Eye: Poe Lingers On

Filmsuck ·

2023/01/18

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 of his work, considering he was a master of horror and the detective-centered mystery, both thriving

en

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