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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

73:20

NATCHEZ: Mississippi Goddam

Filmsuck ·

2026/04/22

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 romantic fantasy of the gracious Old South. However, new tour guides and local activists, several of

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65:08

Chris Fleming: Saving Stand-up Comedy

Filmsuck ·

2026/03/24

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-stretch purple jumpsuit made by Prince's longtime costume designer Anthony Sartino, Fleming is able to

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55:48

HAMNET: Good Grief

Filmsuck ·

2026/03/10

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 Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (by Zhao and the author of the source novel by Maggie

en

61:53

THE BRIDE! A Messy Monster Mash

Filmsuck ·

2026/03/10

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 corner of her mouth, a chemical stain left over from the process of reanimation. Dolores is forgiving of the

en

69:24

The Schism Over THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE

Filmsuck ·

2026/01/27

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 everything was so ILL” and found THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE a dull empty frustrating would-be-hipster work

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56:35

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER: Here's to Strained...

Filmsuck ·

2026/01/15

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 commercial expectations of such typically hard-hitting effects as “drama, violence, revenge, sex” in

en

53:03

A Very TV Christmas

Filmsuck ·

2025/12/16

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 use her Ghost of Christmas Past and Future powers in showing Noelle how to find a man and a plan

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68:27

FRANKENSTEIN: Guillermo Del Toro's Grand and Goofy...

Filmsuck ·

2025/11/18

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, Eileen experienced such a blinding hatred of the whole thing she could only gradually realize that…yes,

en

73:09

BUGONIA: The Rhetorical Impasse

Filmsuck ·

2025/11/04

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 force her to arrange a meeting between the cousins and the “Andromedans” on their mother ship in order

en

57:05

It's a Good Time for ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Filmsuck ·

2025/10/07

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 Leonardo DiCarprio, who’s trying to protect his teenage daughter from his past. Then they’re targeted by

en

57:33

Darren Aronofsky CAUGHT STEALING a Good Time

Filmsuck ·

2025/09/13

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.

en

01:14:21

Straying into Documentaries

Filmsuck ·

2025/08/12

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 undercover operatives to break up the relationships of husbands and their mistresses, tests the limits of Lo's

en

01:11:33

Cracking Ourselves Up: Self-presentation in Onscreen...

Filmsuck ·

2025/07/29

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!

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58:33

How Much is TOO MUCH?

Filmsuck ·

2025/07/16

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 relocating from Brooklyn to London and immediately starting a messy relationship with an indie rocker played by

en

01:06:15

WHITE LOTUS Season 4: How Deep is the Water?

Filmsuck ·

2025/06/17

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.

en

59:13

Praise for SINNERS

Filmsuck ·

2025/06/17

Co-hosts Dolores and Eileen enthuse about the messy but compelling thrills of Ryan Coogler's delirious Deep South vampire extravaganza!

en

01:08:46

JOHN WICK and BALLERINA: Seeking Rough Justice

Filmsuck ·

2025/06/17

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 5, featuring the return of Keanu Reeves as everyone's favorite world-weary assassin.

en

01:15:43

Meet Your Heroes Part Deux: Interviewing Todd Haynes

Filmsuck ·

2025/03/26

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, much more.

en

01:10:01

This Absurd Ritual, The Oscars

Filmsuck ·

2025/03/05

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 celebrities who would've been inclined to rail at the current administration's punitive tear through the

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01:01:12

We're Still Here

Filmsuck ·

2025/02/26

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 also up for multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best International Film, and Best Actress

en

80 results

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