Filmsuck

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 clearly inspired THE EXORCIST (1971)! 

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 Ortega of WEDNESDAY. Add the divine Catherine O'Hara as Lydia's mother, the daffy conceptual artist Delia Deetz, and the stage is set for fantastical fun with the living and the "recently deceased" and the highly porous border in between.

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 BLIMP, BLACK NARCISSUS, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, TEA AND SYMPATHY, HEAVEN KNOWS MR. ALLISON, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, THE KING AND I, BONJOUR TRISTESSE, SEPARATE TABLES, and THE INNOCENTS.

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 chapters charting Streisand's youthful rise to fame bear this out, as she overcame harsh prejudices against her offbeat looks and personality and working-class Brooklyn Jewish roots to produce sensational performances in nightclubs, and on Broadway, and in films and recording studios.

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 Dafoe. In this outre feminist fairy tale, she soon escapes to the Continent with a hedonistic lawyer (Mark Ruffalo), and in the process of exploration and self-education escapes the control of the men in her life.